PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu on Thursday received the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, at the Aso Villa in Abuja.
Tinubu and Okonjo-Iweala were in a closed-door meeting at the nation’s political capital where they discussed trade matters as they relate to national, continental and global relevance.
In a chat with newsmen after the meeting, the WTO boss, who was in company of Trade Minister Jumoke Oduwole, said, “We came to brief him about something very joyful that we did today with the help of the first lady.
“We launched a Women’s Exporters’ Fund for the digital economy. This is a fund that is jointly managed by the World Trade Organisation and the International Trade Centre and support women to weather the storms of the economy and create jobs for themselves.
“It is part of the thinking of social safety net and what we can do to support Nigerian women to contribute more to the economy and to themselves.
“Nigeria competed and one, one of four countries that won globally to be part of this initiative.
“We have 67,000 Nigerian women who applied for this and 146 of them won and they are going to have money disbursed directly to them.
“16 of them won what we called the Booster Track; those who already have businesses but their businesses would be scaled up. They would receive technical and business supports from the WTO and the ITC for 18 months.
“Another 100 would get $5,000 each to start and strengthen their businesses, with 12-month reforms.”
The Nigerian president’s meeting with Okonjo-Iweala occurred two weeks before the expiration of her first term as WTO boss on August 31, 2025, and the commencement of her second term on September 1, 2025.
The renowned development economist and global finance expert made history in 2021 as the first African and first woman to lead the 164-nation-member WTO.
Tinubu had expressed confidence that Okonjo-Iweala’s continued leadership would strengthen the international economic organisation’s role as a critical pillar of inclusive global economic growth and good governance in the next four years.
