World Trade Organization has reappointed Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the Director General of the organization for a second term in office. Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman and the first African to head the WTO, was the only candidate in the race.
The organization’s 166 members approved by consensus during a special meeting of the organization’s General Council, held behind closed doors today to give incumbent Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala a second term as Director-General.
Her current term ends in August 2025, and the appointment process for the next mandate had initially been scheduled to take months.
But with Okonjo-Iweala the only candidate, African countries called for the process to be speeded up, officially to facilitate preparations for the WTO’s next big ministerial conference, set to be held in Cameroon in 2026.
The unstated objective is to accelerate the process, in order to avoid been vetoed by Trump’s team, just as they did four years ago, said Keith Rockwell, a senior research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation.
The common practice of appointing Directors-General by consensus made it possible in 2020 for Trump to block Okonjo-Iweala’s appointment for months, forcing her to wait to take the reins until after President Joe Biden entered the White House in early 2021.
