Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala's First Day as the WTO's First African, First Woman Director-General

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian economist who had twice served as her country’s finance minister and previously worked as a managing director at the World Bank, took office as Director-General of the World Trade Organization on March 1, 2021, becoming the first woman and the first African to lead the institution since its founding in 1995.

Her path to the role ran through an unusually drawn-out selection process. The WTO’s General Council formally chose her on February 15, 2021, after the United States, under the incoming Biden administration, dropped its objection to her candidacy, an objection the prior administration had raised in favor of a South Korean candidate who ultimately withdrew from the race. That reversal broke a monthslong deadlock and cleared the way for Okonjo-Iweala’s appointment to a four-year term.

Her first day in Geneva landed in the middle of the WTO’s General Council annual meeting, a scheduling overlap that put her directly into the organization’s working sessions from the outset rather than easing in gradually. She marked the occasion by telling colleagues, “I am coming into one of the most important institutions in the world and we have a lot of work to do,” a framing that pointed toward the substantial agenda she inherited, including stalled trade negotiations and the WTO’s role in coordinating an equitable global response to the Covid-19 pandemic, then still in its acute phase.

Okonjo-Iweala’s appointment extended a career that had already included two stints as Nigeria’s finance minister (2003-2006 and 2011-2015, the first woman to hold the post), a brief period as the country’s foreign minister in 2006, and a 25-year career at the World Bank that culminated in her serving as managing director of operations from 2007 to 2011. The WTO’s General Council reappointed her to a second term on November 29, 2024, keeping her in the role established that March morning in 2021 as a milestone for both women and African leadership at the top of a major global economic institution.