Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Finance Minister and former Managing Director of the World Bank has been announced as the recipient of the 2020 Forbes Africa-CNBC Award.
In a press statement, Paul Nwabuikwu, the media adviser to Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the award was coming weeks after the chair of the General Council of the World Trade Organization, David Walker and facilitators of the process for the appointment of Directors-General formally submitted her name as the WTO DG designate as the candidate who has garnered the most support to head the organization.
The statement said she was also the World Health Organisation (WHO) Special Envoy for the newly inaugurated Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator and its offshoot the COVAX facility, an international collaboration aimed at accelerating the development, production, and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, drugs and tests kits around the world with the specific objective of ensuring timely, affordable and equitable access to poor countries.
It said Okonjo-Iweala also serves as the Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a public-private global health partnership that has immunised 760 million children in developing countries and saved 13 million lives.
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Reacting to the news, Okonjo-Iweala expressed her delight at the recognition and dedicated the award to Africans facing the health and socio-economic challenges of Covid-19 during a very difficult year.
According to her, “It is a great honour to serve Africa in different capacities. I look forward to deploying my energies at the WTO for Africa and the world.”
It would be recalled that Okonjo-Iweala emerged the overwhelming choice of WTO member-countries following a keenly contested race in which she got the majority support of the 164 member countries.
“The Forbes Africa-CNBC award was the latest honour clinched by the multi-award-winning development economist, one of the African Union (AU) Special Envoys appointed to mobilize international support for Africa’s efforts to address the COVID-19 economic fallout,” the statement read in part.
