Commercial Counsellor, Nigeria High Commission, Pretoria, South Africa

Ali is currently the Commercial Counsellor at Nigeria’s High Commission in South Africa responsible for Nigeria’s economic diplomatic relations. Ali has over 12 years of experience in international trade negotiations (WTO, Regional /Bilateral Trade Agreement) trade related issues and with a proven tracks records of providing policy analysis and briefing for top level management within the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment.
Ali has extensive capacity and knowledge of multilateral trading system obligations and matters under negotiation in the current round of the Doha Development Agenda namely, Non-Agriculture Market Access (NAMA), Trade Facilitation, and the development dimension.
Ali is passionate about championing Africa’s cause for development through an ambitious regional integration agenda in terms of industrialization, boosting intra-Africa trade, trade facilitation, harmonization of trade policies and practices, and effective participation in the multilateral trading system. I have good understanding on some challenges be faced by our developing African countries’ including supply-side constraints, limited value-addition, over-dependence on primarily commodities for export, infrastructure gaps, poor trade facilitation implementations, and problems on the ease of doing business.
Ali worked as the Deputy Chief of Party for a World Bank Project aimed at increasing firms growth and employment in the participating firms. The Project seeks to achieve its objectives through free training; free consulting services; Skills placement and grants.
Ali holds a Masters degree in International Law and Economics from the World Trade Institute, University of Berne, Switzerland as well as a Post Graduate Diploma in Trade Law and Policy Management.