Double delight as West Africans lead global bodies
Publish date: 22 February 2021
Issue Number: 910
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: Finance
There’s been no shortage of African giants who have shaped history. Former South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts played a leading role at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, advocating for the creation of the League of Nations, Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN (and they were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize) and Ethiopian public health researcher Tedros Ghebreyesus is the first African Director-General of the WHO. And Legalbrief reports that the World Bank last week named former Senegalese Finance Minister Makhtar Diop to lead the agency responsible for private sector finance. This follows the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) decision to select Nigeria’s former Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as its new Director-General, the first African and first woman to serve in that role.
Diop served for six years as the World Bank’s vice-president for the Africa Region, where he oversaw a major expansion of the institution's work in Africa and the delivery of a record-breaking $70bn in commitments. A report on the IoL site notes that the bank said he has ‘a deep development and finance experience and a career of energetic leadership and service to developing countries in both public and private sectors’. David Malpass, president of the World Bank, described Diop as having ‘deep development and finance experience’ in both the public and private sectors. The Financial Times reports that the bank said Diop would push its strategy of ‘creating markets and mobilising private capital at significant scale’ to further these aims. He would lead the International Finance Corporation's efforts to increase investments in businesses promoting green development and gender equality as well as in fragile and conflict-affected countries including Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia, it said.
Three months after the Trump administration rejected her, Okonjo-Iweala last week received unanimous backing to become the first woman and first African Director-General of the WTO. A BusinessLIVE report notes that Okonjo-Iweala will have her work cut out for her at the trade body, even with Donald Trump, who had threatened to pull the US out of the organisation, no longer in the White House. She will need to broker international trade talks in the face of persistent US-China conflict; respond to pressure to reform trade rules; and counter protectionism heightened by the Covid-19 pandemic. She held a previous role as chair of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation after a public sector career in international finance, including 25 years at the World Bank. Her dual US citizenship means she's also the first American to hold the organisation's top job.
Okonjo-Iweala ran against seven other candidates by espousing a belief in trade’s ability to lift people out of poverty. In her acceptance speech, she said that getting a trade deal at the next major ministerial meeting would be a ‘top priority’ and also urged members to reject vaccine nationalism. In the same speech, she described the challenges facing the body as ‘numerous and tricky but not insurmountable’. A Fin24 report notes that the US delegation to the WTO said it was 'committed to working closely' with Okonjo-Iweala and she could count on the US to be a constructive partner. 'Dr Okonjo-Iweala has promised that under her leadership it will not be business as usual for the WTO, and we are excited and confident that she has the skills necessary to make good on this promise,' it said in a statement. China's delegation said 'the WTO is at its critical moment and must be able to deliver soon'. 'The collective decision made by the entire membership demonstrates a vote of trust not only in Dr Ngozi (Okonjo-Iweala) herself, but also in our vision, our expectation and the multilateral trading system that we all believe and preserve,' it said. Okonjo-Iweala can seek to renew her term after it ends on 31 August 2025.
Meanwhile, the man charged with implementing Africa’s historic free trade agreement has rallied against the WTO, saying it needs to refine its rules to make it possible for Africa and the developing world to industrialise. ‘We have a consistent demand … give us the policy space for industrial development, the policy space that we require for us to develop. Some of the rules need to be changed, they must be reformed,’ said Wamkele Mene, the South African chosen as the inaugural secretary-general of the African Continental Free Trade Area. Mene told Business Times that while the world had experienced a rise in trade protectionism and trade wars, Africa has shown the way by negotiating an agreement that liberalises trade and establishes a rulesbased system. ‘Actually, we have helped the WTO ... we have strengthened the WTO.'
In another significant development, South African advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza SC was this month appointed as a judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, reports News24. Justice Sacko Modibo, of the Republic of Mali, was also appointed to the Bench, which is made up of 11 judges. According to a statement on the court's website, the judges will be sworn in during the 61st ordinary session in June. SA Minister of International Relations & Co-operation Naledi Pandor said Ntsebeza's appointment was an ‘outcome of the support and confidence African countries have for SA'. ‘SA wishes Advocate Ntsebeza well in his new assignment. We are glad that his extensive experience and knowledge in the field of human rights will be of immense contribution to our continent,’ she added. Ntsebeza previously served as a commissioner on the UN International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur. He was also a commissioner and head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Investigative Unit. He has served as a High Court and Labour Court judge in SA.
Ntsebeza says he doesn’t know what he’s taking to the table when he takes up his appointment. ‘Die Here weet alleen (Only God knows),’ he is quoted as saying in an interview with the Mail & Guardian. He added: ‘What comes to mind are things like the genocides and human rights atrocities in Rwanda and the DRC. On the African continent, we still have human rights that are observed more in the breach than in practice. We now have a court, which will make a difference. The court sits four times a year, and there might even be an extraordinary session.’ In the meantime, he notes ‘there is lots of reading and research to be done, and it will be a tough job’.
