Okonjo-Iweala’s Challenges As DG Of WTO (Photos)

Come March 1, 2021, Nigeria’s Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will assume office as Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, WTO, to pilot world trade till August 31, 2025. She will not only be the seventh Director-General of the organization, she will also be the first woman and African to be saddled with such a prestigious but challenging assignment at this pandemic juncture of history.

As staunch supporters of her candidacy based totally on our conviction that she is tailor-made for this process, we congratulate and desire her unqualified fulfillment. She fought the political struggle concerned just like the proverbial Trojan, capitalising on her humongous goodwill across the world as a former Managing Director of the World Bank.

She leveraged on her stories as an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the World Bank in 2012, a race she misplaced to Korean-American, Jim Yong Kim.

As her predecessor, Dr. Robert Azevedo bowed out in August remaining year, Okonjo-Iweala had all but dismissed her fellow contestants to the coveted seat except for the strong opposition of former President Donald Trump of america, who had preferred South Korea’s Yoo Myung Hee.

Now that she has executed her political assignment, it's time to cope with her full interest to the task itself. She is coming to office at a time the sector is poised on the edge of uncertainties spawned via the coronavirus pandemic and large tech-based totally disruptions.

With the appearance of numerous vaccines, the sector is calling forward to a gradual healing from the pandemic and the brand new order of things it's going to throw up. World alternate has been maximum battered with the aid of the pandemic.

This is simply the proper time for a newcomer and reform-minded leader to take fee and make certain overall inclusion in main global alternate in the direction of full recovery.

During the extraordinarily-charged campaigns, Okonjo-Iweala had pledged to break the impasse among the world’s biggest economies – the USA and China – which are nonetheless engaged in a cold conflict of sorts on trade.

She ought to pass to make sure a successful and inclusive implementation of multilateral negotiations which have been pending for 25 years; and she ought to desist from being visible as a pawn of any of the superpowers.

Most importantly, Okonjo-Iweala has a responsibility to ensure that the interests of developing economies, mainly the ones of Nigeria and Africa are taken along, specially now that the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCFTA, has come on circulate with 31 individuals having signed up.

We have no doubt that Dr. Okonjo-Iweala will all over again make Nigerians proud by means of re-enacting her track report of achievements at the WTO and as a consequence open new opportunities and goodwill for extra Nigerians to accept the possibility to serve on the global stage.