The World Trade Organisation (WTO) members have elected Xavier Carim of South Africa to head its dispute settlement body (DSB) in yet another effort aimed at putting developing states at the centre of global trading system.

Mr Carim will begin by steering DSB’s next regular meeting scheduled for March 23 after WTO delegates elected him by acclamation to replace outgoing chairman Harald Neple of Norway.

“At its meeting on February 26, the DSB appointed Ambassador Xavier Carim as the new chair,” WTO Secretariat said in a statement.

With a Brazilian, Roberto Azevedo as its director-general, WTO has lately been pulling all stops to project itself as an Africa (and developing states)-friendly agency.

In December, the agency settled on Nairobi as the first African city to host its ministerial conference with chairperson - Kenya’s trade and international affairs secretary Amina Mohamed - helping the world to break a 10-year deadlock.

Brazil, India, China and South Africa had previously led developing states in championing the anti-domination protests against WTO, leading to collapse of previously ministerial conference.

With key reforms already recorded in the negotiation and implementation arms of the WTO, the all-powerful DSB has been seen as the remaining “unfriendly” aspect of multilateral trading system.

Kenya unsuccessfully pushed for the appointment of Prof James Thuo Gathii, an international trade scholar, as a member of DSB in part of international efforts to make it appealing to the developing states.

When he took over as WTO boss, Mr Xavier Carim Azevedo identified reforms at the DSB among the priorities during his first term in office.

Most developing nations have cited DSB’s long and tedious process among the barriers to their participation in the international trade.

Apart from poor representation at the organ, it takes a firm several years to push its case through the DSB stages. The process which also requires firms to hire well-trained international trade experts, begins when the aggrieved firm lodges its complaint with its country’s ministry in charge of trade, a process that may last several weeks.

Once the firm argues its case successfully, its host government (which unlike the firm is the WTO member) may then adopt the case as dispute against the offending.

To build its case, the member state which adopts its firm(s)’ dispute starts by reviewing numerous WTO rules as well as commitments that members may have made to each other at past forums.

Given the volumes of commitment papers churned out over the last 20 years, that process can drag on for months, even years.

It is until the member is certain of its ability to argue its case through that the process is set rolling. Most poor countries would rather conceal their case than go through that lengthy process.

Latest data produced by WTO indicates that only 500 cases have been concluded since the body was set up 20 years ago. South Africa and Egypt are the only African states that have had cases against them run the full course.

Mr Carim faces numerous disputes, among them access of biotech products to global market and agricultural subsidy.