Kenya’s Amina Mohamed eyes top global job three years after failing to clinch AU job

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Kenya’s Secretary of Sports Amina Mohamed is among six candidates vying to become the next director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to replace Brazil’s Roberto Azevedo. Africa has two other contenders from Nigeria and Egypt.

The new head will have to repair relations with the United States which threatened to leave the WTO.

Azevedo is leaving the world trade body after serving two terms, but is exiting before finishing his second term for ‘personal reasons.’

Amina served as Kenya’s ambassador to the WTO, and in 2005, she becomes the first woman to chair the organisation’s General Council.

The candidacy of Amina, who also served as foreign secretary between 2013 and 2018, comes three and a half years after she unsuccessfully contested for the chairperson of the African Union Commission. She lost to Chad’s foreign minister Moussa Mahamat.