Global Economy Prize 2023

Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the seventh Director-General of the WTO. She took office as WTO Director-General on 1 March 2021, becoming the first woman and the first African to serve as Director-General. She is a global finance expert, an economist and international development professional with over 30 years of experience working in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America. 

She graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in Economics from Harvard University (1976) and earned a Ph.D. in Regional Economics and Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 1981). She has received honorary degrees from 15 universities worldwide.  

Dr Okonjo-Iweala had a 25-year career at the World Bank as a development economist, rising to the No. 2 position of Managing Director, Operations. She served twice as Minister of Finance and Economy of Nigeria (2003-2006 and 2011-2015) and briefly acted as Foreign Minister in 2006, the first woman to hold these positions. Her achievements as Finance Minister garnered international recognition for improving Nigeria’s financial stability (e.g., she negotiated $30 billion in debt relief with rich countries) and fostering greater fiscal transparency to combat corruption. She is a skilled and tenacious negotiator and is considered an effective consensus builder who enjoys the trust of governments and other stakeholders.

She is a firm believer in the power of trade to lift developing countries out of poverty and assist them to achieve robust economic growth and sustainable development. As Finance Minister, she was involved in trade negotiations with other West African countries and contributed to the overhaul of Nigeria's trade policy enabling it to enhance its competitiveness. 

Dr Eleni Gabre-Madhin currently serves as the Chief Innovation Officer of the United Nations Development Programme’s Regional Bureau for Africa, where she is taking the lead in launching timbuktoo, a revolutionary private-public Youth Start-up Innovation Financing Facility for Africa. She has over 25 years of experience in designing and implementing innovative solutions and is a globally recognized thought-leader and respected voice on African development, agricultural commodity markets, entrepreneurship and youth innovation. Before joining UNDP, she held prior senior positions at the World Bank, the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C., the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva and served on the boards of a number of international corporate and non-profit organizations. 

Dr. Gabre-Madhin is founder and chief executive of blueMoon, Ethiopia’s top incubator and early-stage agribusiness startup investor, as well as founder and chair of Ethiopia’s first co-working space company, blueSpace. Prior to this, she founded eleni, Africa’s leader in designing, building, and supporting commodity exchanges in frontier markets, with projects in Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Mozambique, Cameroon, and Rwanda. Between 2006 and 2012, Eleni conceived, designed, and ran the highly acclaimed Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), successfully trading $1.2 billion annually after just 3 years of operation and impacting the livelihoods of over 15 million small farmers. 

Gabre-Madhin holds a doctorate in applied economics from Stanford University, a MSc in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University and a B.A. in economics from Cornell University.