Okonjo-Iweala to slug it out with South Korean Yoo Myung-hee in final contest for WTO leadership

WTO new leadership to be announced November

Whichever the voting swings, the World Trade Organisation, WTO is about to have it first female director-general in its 25-year history.

According to a Bloomberg report, Nigeria’s Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is the country’s candidate for the WTO DG and South Korea’s Yoo Myung-hee have emerged the two final candidates for the WTO leadership.

Okonjo-Iweala served two stints as Nigeria’s finance minister and one term as foreign affairs minister.

She has experience working at international governance bodies as a former managing director of the World Bank, and as a chairman at the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

Read also, Okonjo-Iweala begs US not to leave WTO

Myung-hee is South Korea’s trade minister.

During her 25-year career in government, she helped to expand her country’s trade network through bilateral accords with the United States, China and the United Kingdom.

WTO General Council Chairman, David Walker planned to formally announce the results to the institution’s delegates on Thursday morning in Geneva.

“They’re both very well qualified, it is going to be a fight,” William Reinsch, a trade official in the Clinton administration and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Bloomberg.

He added that the top challenge would be “restoring the organisation to full strength and viability, and restoring its reputation.

“You need members to have confidence that the WTO is capable of solving problems.

“I think right now that confidence is eroded.”