Nigeria’s ex-Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Wednesday had her dream of becoming the first female and an African as the new Director-General of the World Trade Organisation suspended, as Washington insists it would not recognise her as consensus candidate.
In a last ditch move, the United States representative at WTO took to the floor insisting South Korea’s candidate remained a contender, and that “Washington will not recognise Okonjo-Iweala as the consensus candidate for appointment as director-general.”
In response to this, the general counsel postponed its announcement of the new DG until a further meeting scheduled for 9 November; after the US presidential elections.
A panel at the WTO had though recommended her for the position.
The initial choice of Okonjo-Iweala as the consensus candidate for the WTO top job would have been a tremendous boost for Africa and put her forward for one of the toughest jobs in the international system.
Reports from Geneva say she had won the support from the vast majority of member states, including the EU, Japan and China, but not the United States.
She would have to lead the charge for a revival of multilateralism, in the negotiating chambers of the WTO and for a better deal for developing economies, as well as for the practical matter of how reforming trade and patent rules can allow the distribution of life saving vaccines and therapeutics as the coronavirus pandemic rips across the world on its second wave.
If providence provides her the opportunity as the first woman and African to head the trade body, Okonjo-Iweala would have shattered a couple of ceilings at the same time.
She also has a chance to put Africa’s plans to build the world’s biggest free trade area on the top table, pointing to the productive and market opportunities on the continent.
At the same time, she is like winning the race for the job against very stiff opposition. That much was clear when the immediate past DG-Brazil’s Robert Azevêdo-left the post early after years of frustration at the logjams in negotiation on reforming the WTO.
Those negotiations have been made harder by the eruption of a trade war between the US and China alongside sporadic outbreaks of economic nationalism across the globe.
Surely, this must be the worst time to take over an organisation dedicated to multilateral trade agreements; The Africa Report had asked Okonjo-Iweala during the campaign.
“Multilateralism has never been needed more than now. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that this is the time we need to act in solidarity to have multilateral solutions, because there are simply some things in the world that bilateral or even sub-regional solutions cannot solve,” she had responded.
