Source:The Guardian The former finance director of Nigeria who is now a managing director of the World Bank"When I became finance minister they called me Okonjo-Wahala – or Trouble Woman," says Nigeria's former finance and foreign minister, now a managing director of the World Bank.
"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. If you get in my way, you get kicked." Plenty of people have been: corrupt politicians, oil barons who siphon off profits, internet scammers who gave Nigeria a terrible image. Gordon Brown has called her a "brilliant reformer"; Okonjo-Iweala, now 56, negotiated a deal which slashed Nigeria's debt, introduced financial transparency and tripled the growth rate.
Just 14 when the Biafran war broke out, she was 18 when she went to the US to study economics at Harvard, before joining the World Bank, where she became vice-president. When she was appointed Nigeria's finance minister in 2003, then one of only three women in the world to hold such a position, it meant leaving her husband, a surgeon, and their four children in Washington to live in Abuja. In 2007, she returned to the World Bank, where one of her priorities is to raise money for international development. She has also co-founded the private equity Makeda Fund to invest in small businesses owned and run by women in Africa.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP
