South Africa appoints Nigeria’s Okonjo-Iweala to lift country out of recession

Recession-plagued South Africa is looking the way of Nigeria’s former Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to join an economic think tank that will deliver it from its current austerity to economic stability.

President Cyril Ramaphosa reportedly named Mrs Okonjo-Iweala as a member of the country’s Economic Advisory Council in Pretoria and afterwards took group photographs with other members of the council.

The rainbow nation is frantically seeking panacea to its myriad economic challenges which recently saw the nation slip to its second recession in successive years with its economy contracting by 1.4% in Q4 2019.

South Africa’s economy grew by a negligible 0.2% in 2019, its worst show since the global financial crisis, making Nigeria to recently overtake it as the continent’s biggest economy.

Read also: Why Nigeria remains the poorest of Africa’s 5 biggest economies despite overtaking South Africa as the largest

A reputable economist and international development expert, Okonjo-Iweala is the Chair of the Board of the African Union’s African Risk Capacity and Chair of the Board of the Nelson Mandela Institution.

She was the co-Chair of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation and Chair of the World Bank Development Committee.

She spent 25 years at the World Bank as a development economist, rising through the ranks to the number two position of Managing Director.

She holds many honours and doctorate degrees from several universities of the world.

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