Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s former Finance Minister and Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy has bagged another major international appointment.
She is appointed WHO Special Envoy for the newly inaugurated Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.
This comes barely 1 month after the South African Government invited her into its team of economic think-tank to help the nation out of its struggling economy.
She was also recently named by the Managing Director of the IMF (Kristalina Georgieva) as a member of the External Advisory Group of the IMF.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s latest appointment was announced by the Director General of the organisation Dr Tedros Gbebreyesus during the webinar launch of ACT from Geneva.
Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will work with Sir Andrew Witty, a British business executive in the same capacity. They will both mobilise international commitment to the ACT initiative.
In another development, during an interview with CNBC Africa yesterday, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that “the COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis, a tragedy that is all at once fast and slow-moving, personal and global.
“The virus has killed more than 150,000 people. Livelihoods have been hit hard as communities are cut off and businesses are forced to close. Country leaders are understandably looking for ways to stimulate their economies immediately.
“During a crisis of this scale, it is understandable to the familiar. But, for their own sakes, governments must avoid defaulting to familiar investment habits – namely, ramping up production and use of high carbon emitting fuels.”