History-maker, Nigeria’s Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala (NOI), who is currently the Director-General (DG) of the influential World Trade Organisation (WTO) wants an encore. In February, 2021, the Harvard and Massachusetts-trained development economist broke the ceiling and upturned stereotype when she became the first female, and first African to sit as DG of WTO.
WTO is the only globally recognised international organisation that deals with the rules of trade between nations. It drives and moderates global trade on the rotor of WTO agreements, a set of rules of engagement ratified by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and subsequently ratified in their respective parliaments. The major goal is to ensure seamless, predictable free trade typified by the movement of goods and services.
Since 1995 when WTO was established, global trade has expanded nearly five-fold in value terms, driving faster growth in developing and developed economies, and helping lift over 1.5 billion people out of extreme poverty, the world body of 166-member nations (with more willing to join) stated in its website.
Initially preoccupied with trade in goods, contemporary exigencies show that the future of trade is services, digital and green economy. In the emergent brave new world, trade has transcended exchange of physical goods, it now embodies trading in services and a whole basket of digital offerings. Therefore, effort must be made and sustained to ensure inclusivity. No nation should feel cheated, left behind or hard done by in the global trade matrix.
This is where Okonjo-Iweala has shown mastery of the art of negotiation these past three years to the delight of most member nations. And this might be the compelling reason why she wants another term in office fully backed from home by African nations. With Democrats still calling the shots in the United States, NOI stands a chance of getting her wish served. She is starting to make her desires known very early, as some people say, to gather enough momentum before the US election in November. There is a pall of fear that a Donald Trump Presidency (in the event that he wins, I shudder at this prospect) will block NOI as it tried to do in the runup to the campaign and election that brought her to power as DG in 2021. It took the Presidency of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to thrust her to the exalted WTO seat.
“The Biden-Harris administration is pleased to express its strong support for the candidacy of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the next Director General of the WTO,” White House said at that time. She was unanimously appointed as the Director-General on 15 February, 2021 and effectively assumed office on 1 March 2021. The US government of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris openly endorsed her candidacy. Democrats are always good at innovating and shifting the paradigm. It has to be said that NOI did not emerge the historical leader of the WTO because she’s Nigerian-American. Neither was she overwhelmingly endorsed because she’s a woman. Far from it. She was simply the best among those who showed interest.
Credit to Muhammadu Buhari, then President of Nigeria, who nominated her in June 2020 as Nigeria’s candidate for the top job at WTO. Her pedigree drips excellence, scholarship, results, advocacy and activism against socio-economic and trade imbalance. Her candidacy gained blistering momentum which pushed her to the final round of the election and was squared up against Yoo Myung-hee, the Trade Minister of South Korea. But support for NOI was overwhelming, both from the EU nations and the US government. And on 5 February 2021, Yoo Myung-hee announced her withdrawal from the race after “close consultation with the United States.” That paved the way for NOI whom the WTO in its formal report in October 2021 said “clearly carried the largest support by members in the final round; and, enjoyed broad support from members from all levels of development and from all geographic regions and has done so throughout the process.”
NOI has so far done three years out of a four-year term which runs out until August 2025. But she wants to get another term. On merit she deserves a majority endorsement. Already, there is a broad Africa-led push to start the process early. At 70 and still fit, fecund with no trace of senility, she wants to complete “unfinished business” from her first term. She truly deserves it. Taking up the job of DG of WTO at the time she did, when the world was just crawling out of a deep hole of Covid-induced socio-economic meltdown, NOI has acquitted herself by humanising global trade. With issues of widening and deepening climate change and environmental pollution, NOI has had to walk literally on egg shells to adjust a balance between trade among developed and developing nations in the midst of quest for industrialisation, renewable energy and consideration for a safer tomorrow.
Truly Okonjo-Iweala has some unfinished businesses which must be accomplished with her team. While WTO dragged in achieving much in agriculture and food security through trade, there is a spring of hope that the ongoing reforms and strategies will help balance the imbalance in food security between the developed and developing nations. She admitted this in her annual report which covered activities in 2023 till early 2024.
In her words, “members left key business unfinished – notably on fisheries subsidies and agriculture. At the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) held from 26 February to 2 March 2024 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the conference saw the entry into force of new disciplines for domestic regulation aimed at cutting services-related red tape and making it more straightforward for service providers to enter foreign markets.”
A major highpoint of her reign was scored in digital trade when members at MC13 helped preserve market predictability by extending by two years the longstanding moratorium against levying customs duties on cross-border electronic transmissions. In barely over three years and six months, Okonjo-Iweala has shown that she’s made for this job. The African amazon who has helped to shape economies in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas has leveraged her experience to birth a dynamic WTO. For this, she deserves another mandate.
First published in Sunday Sun
