Kenya’s Amina Mohamed and Nigeria’s Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala advanced to the next round of the selection process for the World Trade Organization’s Director-General role. This follows an intense period of consultations between the representatives of the 164 members to the organization.
The two African women join South Korea’s Yoo Myung-hee, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad Maziad Al-Tuwaijri, and the United Kingdom’s (UK) Dr. Liam Fox. Hence, three of the five remaining candidates are female, which bodes as a positive sign for an organization that has never been led by a woman.
The next round in the selection process will run from September 24 to October 6, at the end of which the competition will be narrowed down to just two candidates for the final round, with the winner to take office in November. During this latest stage, Mexico’s Dr. Jesús Seade Kuri, Egypt’s Abdel-Hamid Mamdouh, and Moldova’s Tudor Ulianovschi were all removed from the race after receiving insufficient support from member-states.
WTO General Council Chair David Walker said of the five candidates who progressed to the next stage: “Members consider all highly qualified and respected individuals. I would also like to pay tribute to the dignified manner in which they, their delegations, and their Governments have conducted themselves in this process.”
The Kenyan candidate, Amina Mohamed, said in an interview with The Africa Report that she wishes for the WTO to “regain its centrality in economic governance” through the “reform” of its “rule-making function.”
Since December 2019, the US has obstructed the WTO’s trade dispute resolution body by blocking the appointment of judges to the organization’s top court, the Appellate Body. In the absence of a three-judge quorum, the body has too few officials to rule on major trade disputes.
Mohamed has been at the forefront of Kenya’s multilateral negotiations with bodies such as the Commonwealth and indeed the WTO itself. She has served as foreign minister from 2013 to 2018, becoming the first woman to serve in that position and the first Muslim woman in Kenya’s cabinet. She also became the first woman to chair the WTO’s General Council, the organization’s “highest-level decision making organ”, in 2005.
During her tenure, she played a key role in the WTO adopting the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips), which assists less developed countries in using technology from richer countries to make essential goods, such as generic drugs, without violating intellectual property rights.
She has also been the head of the Dispute Settlement Body and the Trade Policy Review Body. Notably, she previously ran for the same position seven years ago, but lost to the outgoing director-general, Robert Azevêdo.
The Nigerian candidate, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is a former finance and foreign minister in the African nation, and is celebrated for having reduced Nigeria’s debt burden by billions of dollars during her tenure. Aside from serving as foreign minister twice—from 2003 to 2006 under President Olusegun Obasanjo and from 2011 to 2015 under Goodluck Jonathan—she has also been a development economist and a managing director at the World Bank.
Okonjo-Iweala has outlined her goal of raising Africa’s share of world trade from the current level of 3%, and also of working towards the relaxation of coronavirus-induced export restrictions. She hopes that any such restrictions are “temporary, transparent and proportionate so we make sure they do not harm other members.”
All of the candidates are bidding to replace outgoing chief Robert Azevêdo, who unexpectedly resigned in May, and will step down from his post on August 31.
WTO Narrows Race for DG Post Down to Five Candidates, Final Stage to Begin Later This Week
Three of the five remaining candidates are female, which bodes as a positive sign for an organization that has never been led by a woman.
September 22, 2020
IMAGE SOURCE: EPA / AFPNigeria’s Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (L) and Kenya’s Amina Mohamed