World Trade Organization (WTO) chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was reappointed for a second term on Friday, amid concerns over the potential return of Donald Trump and his opposition to international trade regulations.
Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman and first African to lead the WTO, was the sole candidate for the position and had been widely expected to secure 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 was reappointed by consensus during a closed-door meeting of the WTO’s General Council, the organization announced.
Okonjo-Iweala’s current term ends in August 2025, but the selection process for her next term, initially expected to take months, was expedited. With no other candidates in the running, African nations advocated for speeding up the process to prepare for the WTO’s next ministerial conference in Cameroon in 2026.
An unstated aim, according to Keith Rockwell, a senior research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation, was to avoid the risk of Donald Trump’s team vetoing her reappointment, as they did during her initial bid four years ago. In 2020, Trump’s opposition delayed her appointment for months, leaving her to assume office only after President Joe Biden took over in early 2021.
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