Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Monday resumed duty as the director general of the World Trade Organisation, weeks after her appointment was endorsed by the United States and approved by the trade organization.
Her appointment was ratified on February 15.
“WTO members have just agreed to appoint Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the next director-general,” the global trade body said in a statement.
Okonjo-Iweala is the first woman and the first African to lead WTO.
But her appointment was almost scuppered by the former American president Donald Trump, whose administration preferred South Korea’s trade minister Yoo Myung-hee for the job.
Trump administration’s insistence on Minister Yoo delayed was in spite of Okonjo-Iweala’s endorsement by the key ambassadors of the WTO last October.But her path to the WTO top job was cleared after Trump was defeated at the polls and the South Korean minister dropping her dream.
