A conversation with Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Nigerian economist and former World Bank managing director talks about Africa, Covid-19, boardroom diversity, and her hopes to lead the World Trade Organisation.
She is one of several candidates vying for the position, after the current managing director unexpectedly resigned a year early. But at a time when trade is suffering from the ravages of a sceptical Trump administration and a pandemic, is the job something of a poisoned chalice? And what would it mean for an African woman to take over?
The former Nigerian finance minister now holds multiple jobs - on the boards of Twitter, Standard Chartered Bank, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. They give her a unique perspective on many of the challenges now facing the planet. But Manuela Saragosa asks her whether she thinks the pool of Africans invited to these top positions needs to be widened.
Correction: During the programme, the departing head of the WTO Roberto Azevedo is erroneously referred to as Mexican. Mr Azevedo is actually from Brazil.
(Picture: Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Credit: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:06.1 | Coming up, the World Trade Organisation is set to choose a new leader, |
| 0:10.4 | but with the global trading system under threat, who'd want the job? |
| 0:14.3 | I want to lead the WTO because I believe there's an opportunity to serve all these countries in the world. |
| 0:23.1 | Dr Ngozi Okonjewela, Nigeria's former finance minister, makes her pitch. |
| 0:28.2 | These days, she's a key figure on the corporate international stage. |
| 0:31.3 | So what does she make of the Black Lives Matter movement? |
| 0:34.5 | And what can the world do to help African economies weather the coronavirus |
| 0:38.3 | pandemic? That's coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC. When it comes to African female |
| 0:47.4 | heavy hitters on the global economy, you can't not mention Dr. Ngozzi Okonjo Iweila. She made her name |
| 0:53.7 | as a development economist with 25 years |
| 0:56.1 | of work at the World Bank. She left to become Nigeria's finance minister and these days she's on |
| 1:01.7 | the boards of numerous big companies and organisations, including Standard Chartered Bank, Twitter, |
| 1:07.1 | and the Bill Gates funded Global Alliance for Vaccines vaccines and immunisation. But the job she's |
| 1:12.5 | going for now is Director General of the World Trade Organisation. She faces some stiff |
| 1:17.7 | competition and in a moment we'll hear why she thinks it's time for an African to head the WTO. |
| 1:23.3 | First though, the BBC's economics correspondent Andrew Walker on why the current Director-General, Mexico's Roberto Azevedo, |
| 1:30.5 | is stepping down from the position a year early. |
| 1:33.7 | He has said there are personal reasons for it |
| 1:36.1 | without expanding on that beyond saying it's not to do with his health. |
| 1:40.1 | He also said there are various things coming up |
| 1:42.3 | where it would be good to have his successor in place and having time to get his or her feet properly under the desk, as it were. |
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