Africa's WTO moment :: Mmegi Online

If she is chosen to head the World Trade Organisation (WTO), former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, an experienced development economist, would make a broken institution relevant again. She has the gravitas to build bridges between the US and China, on the one hand, and between the WTO and Africa, on the other. KINGSLEY CHIEDU MOGHALU* writes

BOSTON: The selection of the World Trade Organisation’s next director-general has entered its final phase, with two candidates left in the running: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian finance and economy minister and a former managing director of the World Bank, and Yoo Myung-hee, South Korea’s trade minister. In view of the WTO’s current challenges, Okonjo-Iweala is the better choice.

The WTO faces two major crises: an institutional crisis caused by the great-power rivalry between the United States and China, and a crisis of globalisation – of which the WTO, as the overseer of global trade rules, is a major symbol.

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