The General Council of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Monday approved the candidacy of a new director-general in the person of economist and international development expert Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

“Okonjo-Iweala will become the first woman and the first African to head the WTO,” the organization said in a statement.

Okonjo-Iweala said her key priority in her new role will be to effectively address the economic fallout from the COVID - 19 pandemic.

“A strong WTO is vital if we are to recover fully and quickly from the devastation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic , ” the WTO chief-elect said, adding that she would soon begin targeted consultations with World Trade Organization council members.

Okonjo-Iweala was born in 1954 in Ogwashi-Uku, Nigeria. A graduate of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she worked at various times as Nigeria's finance minister, the country's foreign policy chief, and also served as managing director of the World Bank. Before being elected as the seventh Director-General of the WTO, she served as Chair of the Board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).

The post of head of the WTO remained vacant for more than six months. The representative of Brazil, Roberto Azevedo, who held this position since 2013, prematurely resigned as director general of the World Trade Organization on August 31, 2020.

Okonjo-Iweala's term will begin on March 1 and run until August 31, 2025.

The WTO will be headed by a woman for the first time in history