“The 2020 #AfricanOftheYear Award honoree is…Congratulations to Dr. @NOlweala! Board Chair @Gavi; Board Chair @ARCapicity, gracing the cover of @forbesafrica,” the world’s leading voice for entrepreneurial success and free enterprise tweeted on Tuesday.
Reacting to the development , Okonjo-Iweala, expressed her delight at the recognition and dedicated the award to Africans facing the health and socio-economic challenges of COVID-19 during a very difficult year.
“It is a great honour to serve Africa in different capacities. I look forward to deploying my energies at the WTO for Africa and the world,” she said.
Okonjo-Iweala emerged the overwhelming choice of WTO member-countries following a keenly contested race in which she got the majority support of the 164 member countries.
The Forbes Africa-CNBC award is the latest honour clinched by the multi-award-winning development economist, one of the African Union (AU) Special Envoys appointed to mobilize international support for Africa’s efforts to address the COVID-19 economic fallout.
She is also the World Health Organisation (WHO) special envoy for the newly inaugurated Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator and its offshoot the COVAX facility, an international collaboration aimed at accelerating the development, production, and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, drugs and tests kits around the world with the specific objective of ensuring timely, affordable and equitable access to poor countries.
Okonjo-Iweala also serves as the Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a public-private global health partnership that has immunised 760 million children in developing countries and saved 13 million lives.