Nigeria’s former Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, made full history on Monday, March 1, when she officially resumed duties as the Director-General of the World Trade Organization.
She is the first woman and African to occupy the position.
On her first day at work as WTO chief, she said the global trade organisation has lots of work to do and she feels ready to start.
In a social media statement on Monday morning, the WTO said: “Welcome to Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on her first day as WTO Director-General! She makes history as the first woman and first African to take up this post.”
On her first day, Dr. Iweala said she is “coming into one of the most important institutions in the world and we have a lot of work to do. I feel ready to go.”
Okonjo-Iweala’s appointment, which was ratified on February 15, was almost scuttled by the former American president Donald Trump, whose administration preferred South Korea’s trade minister Yoo Myung-hee for the job.
Trump administration’s insistence on Minister Yoo delayed was in spite of Okonjo-Iweala’s endorsement by the key ambassadors of the WTO last October.
But her path to the WTO top job was cleared after Trump was defeated at the polls and the South Korean minister dropping her dream.
President Joe Biden subsequently endorsed the Nigerian for the position, with the US Trade Representative praising her “wealth of knowledge in economics and international diplomacy”.
She is hitting the ground running, with her first day on the job in Geneva coinciding with the annual meeting of WTO’s General Council.
Delegates are expected to agree that the organisation’s next ministerial conference, which had been scheduled for last year but was postponed due to the pandemic, will be held in Geneva in December.
The question remains whether the new WTO chief, considered a strong-willed trailblazer, will be able to mould the organisation in her image before then.
While some observers voice hope that Okonjo-Iweala will inject much-needed energy, others stress she has little wiggle room to make dramatic change, given that WTO decisions are made by member states — and only when they can reach consensus.
One of her first tasks will be to nominate four new deputy directors to help recharge the organisation’s negotiating mechanisms.
Okonjo-Iweala has said that one of her main objectives is to push long-blocked trade talks on fishery subsidies across the finish line in time for the ministerial conference, but with negotiations dragging on, that could be a tough sell.
And in the midst of a global economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, she has plenty of other challenges on her plate.
Okonjo-Iweala has voiced concern about growing protectionism and nationalism during the coronavirus crisis and insists trade barriers must be lowered to help the world recover.
Among the issues to be discussed Monday is a controversial push for the WTO to waive intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines.
Dozens of nations say this would help boost production and access and would rein in the pandemic sooner, but the notion has been fiercely rejected by pharmaceutical giants and the countries that host them.
Okonjo-Iweala chaired the Gavi vaccine alliance before running for the WTO and has made tackling the pandemic another of her priorities.