Obasanjo II / JonathanMinister of Finance· 2003 — 2006; 2011 — 2015
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Coordinating Minister of the Economy. Architect of the 2005 Paris Club debt-exit deal. Later WTO Director-General.
The record
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, born 13 June 1954 in Ogwashi-Uku, Delta State, was educated at Harvard (AB, magna cum laude, 1976) and MIT (PhD Regional Economics, 1981). She spent 25 years at the World Bank, rising to Managing Director (Operations).
Recalled by Obasanjo as Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy in 2003, she led the team that negotiated Nigeria's $18 billion debt write-off from the Paris Club in October 2005 — the single largest debt-relief deal in African history.
She returned to the same role under Goodluck Jonathan from 2011 to 2015, presiding over the 2014 GDP rebasing that briefly made Nigeria Africa's largest economy. In March 2021 she became the first African and first woman to be Director-General of the World Trade Organization.
Notable
- Negotiated the $18bn Paris Club debt exit, 2005.
- Led the GDP rebasing exercise of April 2014.
- First African and first woman DG of the WTO, March 2021.
Sources
- World Trade Organization — DG biography (wto.org)
- Okonjo-Iweala, Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria (MIT Press, 2012)
Tier 1 · primary
Courts. Gazettes. National archives.
Tier 2 · corroborating
OCCRP. HRW. BudgIT. TheCable.
Tier 4 · tertiary, flagged
Wikipedia only where primary is pending. Always labelled.