Nigeria

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former two-time Nigerian finance minister, was appointed Monday to the be the next director-general of the World Trade Organization. She is the first African and the first woman to lead the body, which governs trade rules between nations.

"This is a very significant moment for the WTO," David Walker, the WTO's General Council chair, said in a statement.

Her path was cleared after Yoo Myung-hee, the South Korean trade minister, announced she was withdrawing from consideration to head the World Trade Organization.

Sunday Ehigiator

Diatom Impact, in partnership with ElectHer Academy, has begun push to activate and engage more women in the political process with the aim to build a productive, and healthy community.

This push stemmed from the belief that investing in girls and women would create a ripple effect that would yield multiple benefits, not only for individual women, but also for families, communities, and countries.

Female legislators in the National Assembly have formed a team to lobby their male colleagues for the purpose of ensuring the inclusion of women’s rights in the nation’s constitution.

Several attempts made by the women in parliament over the years to ensure the entrenchment of womens rights in the Nigerian constitution had been futile.

However, a former minority leader of the Senate who sponsored the GEO bill in the 8th National Assembly, Senator Biodun Olujimi, said the female federal lawmakers were not taking chances this time round over the matter.

Nigerian women have therefore over the years become targets of violence of diverse forms based on their positions in promoting transformative politics. The minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Dame Pauline Tallen said a sexist and patronage-based political culture, combined with gendered economic and household inequalities, are some of the barriers to women’s participation in governance. She said the ministry is fully committed to ensuring that women participate not only in national development but in all facets of life.

ElectHER has received $100,000 in grants from Diatom Impact and the United States National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

A delegation of national and international partners, led by United Nations (UN) women, has presented to the Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen, a detailed report of a national conference to assess lessons learnt on women’s political participation during the 2019 general elections.

The call for women to actively participate in politics has again yielded fruits as two women in Imo State have been declared winners in two out of three constituencies in which results have been announced in last weekend’s re-run/supplementary polls conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The results of the third, Orlu/Orsu/Oru East Federal Constituency were yet to be declared as at Monday morning.