The World Trade Organization has chosen Nigeria’s former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as its new leader, handing her the task of restoring trust in a rules-based global trading system.
She is both the first female and first African leader of the organization.
On Monday, the WTO’s 164 members unanimously selected the 66-year-old development economist and Nigeria’s former finance minister to serve a four-year term as director general.
After four years of battles between Washington and Beijing over protectionist tariffs and import quotas that badly damaged global trade, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala is expected to set about bridging a growing divide between the administrations running the world’s first and second largest economies.
She also faces global issues surrounding the pandemic.
Speaking after her appointment, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala said her top priority was to ensure the WTO does more to address the coronavirus pandemic, saying members should accelerate efforts to lift export restrictions slowing trade in needed medicines and supplies, and warned of the danger posed by “vaccine nationalism”.
“No one is safe until everyone is safe,” she told Reuters. “Vaccine nationalism at this time just will not pay, because the variants are coming. If other countries are not immunised, it will just be a blowback. It’s unconscionable that people will be dying elsewhere, waiting in a queue, when we have the technology.”
