Okonjo-Iweala Reappointed WTO Director-general
Former Nigerian Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been reappointed as the director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for a second term.
The organisation made the disclosure in a post on X on Friday.
WTO said the reappointment will take effect on September 1, 2025.
Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman and the first African to head the WTO, was the only candidate in the race, and had been all but assured a second term.
The organisation’s 166 members “today agreed to give incumbent Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala a second term as director-general,” the WTO said in a statement.
The 70-year-old Nigerian’s reappointment was approved by consensus during a special meeting of the organisation’s General Council, held behind closed doors, the WTO said.
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, because they did not want Trump’s team to come in and veto her as they did four years ago”, said Keith Rockwell, a senior research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation.
