EVEN for an economist, there are lots of very large numbers in the life of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. As the chair of GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, she has overseen the annual immunization of millions of children. As managing director of the World Bank, she oversaw US$81 billion worth of operations. In her stints in charge of Nigeria’s finances, she tackled Africa’s most populous country’s US$30 billion debt. And she has 1.5 million followers on Twitter.

There are lots of smaller numbers too: the 20 nonprofit organizations that have appointed Okonjo-Iweala to their advisory boards, the major banks and corporations she has advised, the 10 honorary degrees in addition to her own doctorate, 20 or so awards, dozens of major reports authored, and the books.

Then there are the multiple lists frequently featuring Okonjo-Iweala, 66: the world’s 100 most powerful women, 100 most influential people in the world, 10 most influential women in Africa, top 100 or 150 women in the world, and many others.

On Monday, Okonjo-Iweala was added to a new list: that of the director generals of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a position that has never before been occupied by an African person nor by a woman. She will take over the 26-year-old 164-member global trade body, with its budget of US$220 million and staff of 650, at a critical time.

It will be the moment to put all the number-crunching experience she has gained over a 40-year career to use. The global trading system – with the WTO at its heart – is facing a make-or-break moment, say experts. But can Okonjo-Iweala fix it?

Okonjo-Iweala was 6 when Nigeria gained its independence from Britain in 1960. She grew up in a small village in the country’s southern Delta state. Her parents, both distinguished academics, were studying in Europe on scholarships, so she and her six siblings were raised by a grandmother. Life was not easy. By the time she was 9, Okonjo-Iweala had learned to cook, fetch wood and manage many of the household tasks.

The civil war pitting the separatist Biafra state against the Nigerian central government disrupted her education and exposed her to further hardship. “I was eating one meal a day and children were dying. So, I learned to live very frugally. I often say I can sleep on a mud floor as well as a feathered bed and be very comfortable. It has made me someone who can do without things in life because of what we went through,” Okonjo-Iweala told Forbes magazine last year.

When her 3-year-old sister became chronically ill with malaria, it was Okonjo-Iweala who carried her for 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) to the doctor’s surgery, pushing through a crowd of 600 and climbing through a window to get the treatment that saved the child’s life.

At the end of the war, Okonjo-Iweala went to the United States to study economics at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), married her childhood sweetheart and, at the age of 25, began working for the World Bank, rising steadily up the institution’s hierarchy, traveling widely, and only leaving when invited to be finance minister of Nigeria in 2003.

The appointment plunged Okonjo-Iweala into a no-holds barred battle to force through economic reforms. “When I became finance minister they called me Okonjo-Wahala — or Trouble Woman,” she told the Guardian in 2005. “It means: ‘I give you hell.’ But I don’t care what names they call me. I’m a fighter; I’m very focused on what I’m doing and relentless in what I want to achieve.”

She tackled Nigeria’s huge debt by convincing sceptical Western powers to grant relief. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called her “a brilliant reformer,” though others were less appreciative of the deal she did with creditors. Some commentators point out that many of the promises she made to Nigerians of economic growth and job creation went unfulfilled.

“She can be really firm and bold, maybe scary to some people, but at the same time she’s still her[self]. A woman who makes us laugh. She has jokes,” said Ada Osakwe, an economist who worked with Okonjo-Iweala in government.

Now it will be the WTO that she will run. This is a far more exposed and far more influential position than any Okonjo-Iweala has held before.

The Geneva-based organization has faced bitter criticism from all quarters for decades. Poorer nations in the global south have long protested against the advantages they say it has given the developed world, and their relative lack of influence over decision-making compared with richer states. Agricultural subsidies have been a particular point of contention. The organization has not sealed a major multilateral trade deal in years and hopes that it could somehow curtail overfishing.

The COVID-19 pandemic, with struggling economies and growing protectionism worldwide, poses further challenges.

Okonjo-Iweala vowed to tackle her top priorities of fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, promoting the free flow of vaccines and medical supplies, breaking the logjam in the dispute settlement mechanism, and reaching a deal to cut fisheries subsidies in her first virtual press conference following the appointment by consensus during the WTO’s General Council.

“We have the twin shocks of the pandemic, the health side and the economic side, which is challenging so many and it has brought economic devastation to many parts of the world,” she told reporters.

“We also have the issue of lack of trust which has built up over time, not just between the U.S. and China but also between developing and developed country members,” she said.

“First and foremost, we need to focus on the issue of COVID-19 and what the WTO can do to contribute to solutions. It needs to work with the WHO, with the COVAX Facility, with the ACT Accelerator, all these organizations that are trying to accelerate supplies and vaccines to poor countries.”

“COVID-19 is an opportunity for the WTO to have a success and show what it can do, both in the short term and in the long term.”

She said the WTO and its members could encourage countries to lift export restrictions in a bid to ensure the free flow of medical commodities.

“Secondly, how can we encourage and find a third way in which vaccines can be manufactured in many more countries, whilst we don’t discourage research and innovation.”

Another top task Okonjo-Iweala mentioned is the unlocking of the WTO’s dysfunctional dispute settlement system. The Appellate Body, considered as the supreme court for global trade disputes, is supposed to have seven judges and needs a minimum of three to function. It has been paralyzed since Dec. 11, 2019.

“This is a priority to really reform that and take into account the inputs of all members to make sure we come up with a dispute settlement system that works for all.”

She also stressed that negotiations on digital trade will become increasingly important, underlining that the WTO currently does not currently have rules governing e-commerce. “There is a need to modernize the rules of the WTO and bring them up to the 21st century issues. We have to look at the digital economy which has become so prominent during this pandemic.”

Okonjo-Iweala said she hoped to complete negotiations on fisheries subsidies during the 12th WTO ministerial conference (MC12) in Kazakhstan’s capital Nur-Sultan later this year.

The fish subsidy talks, ongoing since 2001, aim at cutting billions of dollars in subsidies that contribute to overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

During her first days in office, Okonjo-Iweala said she would use the political momentum to meet with WTO ambassadors in Geneva as well as her staff in the Secretariat.

She will start her renewable term March 1, which will expire Aug. 31, 2025.

(SD-Agencies)