Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the former minister of finance in Nigeria from 2003 – 2006 and July 2011 to May 2015 has been named the next Angelopoulos global public leader at Harvard Kenny School. Iweala was also the Managing Director of the World Bank for more than 20 years.
As soon as the announcement was made by Harvard, Mrs Iweala took to her twitter to share the news with her 1m followers, she said, “Excited to be named the Harvard University Kennedy School 2020 Angelopoulos Fellow. Honoured to follow in the footsteps of presidents Santos, Halonen, Calderon and former UNSG Ban Ki-Moon.”
Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala is undeniably a remarkable woman that has struggled to fight corruption in Nigeria by strengthening fiscal transparency, therefore tripling Nigeria’s economic growth rate. She was also the power behind the negotiation of Nigeria’s external debt reduction of about $30 billion.
Okonji-Iweala was the first female Minister of Finance of Nigeria, is an active board member of corporations such as the African Risk Capacity, Standard Chartered Bank and more recently Twitter. She has been listed as Fortune’s top 50 Greatest World Leaders and made Forbes Top 100 Most Powerful Women in the World between 2011 – 2014.
