Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Ngozi Okonjo-Iwealais a Nigerian and a highly respected and influential global leader, economist, policy maker and thinker on Finance and Economic Development. She has been listed 5 years consecutively as one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the World by Forbes Magazine and in 2013 was listed as one of the Most Influential People in the World by TIME Magazine. In 2015, she was also listed as one of the 50 Greatest World Leaders by Fortune...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth13 June 1954
CountryNigeria
One in four sub-Saharan Africans is Nigerian, and it has 140 million dynamic people - chaotic people - but very interesting people.
No one can fight corruption for Nigerians except Nigerians. Everyone has to be committed from the top to the bottom to fight it.
I felt Nigeria didn't have to succumb to the image of being a corrupt country; we didn't have to let the economy stagnate.
I know what it means to go to the stream to fetch water... what it means when people are poor and don't have enough to eat. It's not enough to say you know about poverty. You have to live it.
Women account for about 70% of Africa's food production and manage a large proportion of small enterprises. They are also increasingly represented in legislative and executive leadership positions.
I'm told I'm like my father, and he was the most wonderful man. But I think he was gentler than me.
I'm trying to tell you that there's a new wave on the continent. A new wave of openness and democratization in which, since 2000, more than two-thirds of African countries have had multi-party democratic elections. Not all of them have been perfect, or will be, but the trend is very clear.
From 1967 to '70, Nigeria fought a war - the Nigeria-Biafra war. And in the middle of that war, I was 14 years old. We spent much of our time with my mother cooking. For the army - my father joined the army as a brigadier - the Biafran army. We were on the Biafran side.
My parents lost everything, all their savings, because we had to run from the Nigerian side to the Biafran side. We were Igbos.
Nigeria, with the oil sector, had the reputation of being corrupt and not managing its own public finances well. So what did we try to do? We introduced a fiscal rule that de-linked our budget from the oil price.
When I became finance minister, they called me Okonjo-Wahala - or 'Trouble Woman.' It means 'I give you hell.' But I don't care what names they call me. I'm a fighter; I'm very focused on what I'm doing, and relentless in what I want to achieve, almost to a fault. If you get in my way, you get kicked.