Brian Duignan is a senior editor at Encyclopædia Britannica. His subject areas include philosophy, law, social science, politics, political theory, and religion.
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Ngozi Okonjo-Iwealais a Nigerian-American economist who served as the seventh director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) from 2021. She was the first woman and the first African to head the WTO.
Okonjo-Iweala received an A.B. degree in economics (1976) from Harvard University and a Master in City Planning degree (1978) and a Ph.D. in regional economics and development (1981) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She served two tenures at the World Bank, first as a development economist and vice president and corporate secretary of the World Bank Group (1982–2003) and later as managing director of operations (2007–11). In the latter position she was responsible for managing an $81 billion operational portfolio in Africa, South Asia, Europe, and Central Asia. She also led several World Bank projects to assist poor countries during the global financial crisis of 2007–08 and the world food-price crisis of 2008–09. As Nigeria’s finance minister in 2003–06 and again in 2011–15, Okonjo-Iweala introduced reforms to reduce corruption and increase transparency in public finances. In addition, she was briefly the country’s foreign minister in 2006. In 2012 she ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of the World Bank in the first contested election for that position, which is traditionally held by an American (Okonjo-Iweala did not become a U.S. citizen until 2019).
In 2020 the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, nominated Okonjo-Iweala for the position of director general of the WTO. Although her candidacy was broadly supported among WTO members from all geographic regions, it was effectively blocked by the administration of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump, which preferred the South Korean candidate, Yoo Myung-Hee. The necessary consensus of WTO members was finally achieved in February 2021, when the incoming administration of U.S. Pres. Joe Biden announced its support for Okonjo-Iweala.
Okonjo-Iweala held leadership and advisory positions in scores of international, nongovernmental, and charitable organizations, including the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI); the African Union, as chair of the African Risk Capacity Group—an agency established to help African countries prepare for and respond to extreme weather events and other natural disasters—and as a special envoy to negotiate international financial assistance for combating the COVID-19 pandemic; the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate; the International Commission on Financing Global Education; the Rockefeller Foundation; and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She also served as a senior adviser to Lazard Ltd. and as a board member of Standard Chartered PLC and Twitter. She was the recipient of a great many awards and honors from international organizations, national governments, charities, and universities around the world. In 2019 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Brian Duignan
