She brought the World Trade Organization to Cameroon and left without a declaration. For the woman who runs global trade rules, the Yaoundé conference was both a personal achievement and a demonstration of how little consensus is left.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala became the WTO’s Director-General in March 2021, the first woman and the first African to hold the job, after a career as Nigeria’s finance minister and a managing director of the World Bank. She began a second term in 2025. Bringing the organisation’s ministerial conference to Central Africa in March 2026 was, in part, her doing.
What Yaoundé showed
The conference closed on 30 March without an overall ministerial declaration. Members adopted decisions on small economies and on special and differential treatment, moved the investment facilitation agreement forward and agreed to keep talking about fisheries subsidies. The rest was folded into an unfinished “Yaoundé package” and sent back to Geneva.
For the Director-General, that is a familiar arithmetic. The WTO needs consensus among 166 members at a moment when its largest members are rewriting trade policy unilaterally. Her method has been to bank partial wins and keep the institution alive.
The African test
The profile should judge her on what she has changed for African members, not on her biography. Three measurable questions:
- Fisheries. The subsidies agreement matters for coastal states from Mauritania to Gabon. Has any CEMAC member ratified it, and has anyone drawn on the fund created to help them implement it?
- Digital trade. The expiry of the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions is an opportunity for revenue-hungry states and a risk for their own digital firms. Where does Africa stand?
- Accession and capacity. Several African economies remain outside the system or unable to use it. What has the organisation actually delivered in technical assistance?
The succession question
Her second term will end. The article can reasonably ask what happens to African influence in Geneva afterwards, and whether the continent is preparing a candidate or assuming that its turn has passed.
