Africa is today mourning following the death of the continent’s best son, Kofi Annan. The Nobel Peace Prize winner passed on peacefully in Switzerland at the age of 80.
Kofi Atta Annan was born in Kumasi, in central Ghana, Africa, on April 8, 1938. Since 1960 Ghana has been a republic within the British Commonwealth, a group of nations dependent on Great Britain. Named for an African empire along the Niger River, Ghana was ruled by Great Britain for 113 years as the Gold Coast. Annan is descended from tribal chiefs on both sides of his family. His father was an educated man, and Annan became accustomed to both traditional and modern ways of life. He has described himself as being “atribal in a tribal world.”
After receiving his early education at a leading boarding school in Ghana, Annan attended the College of Science and Technology in the capital of Kumasi. At the age of twenty, he won a Ford Foundation scholarship for undergraduate studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he studied economics.
Even then he was showing signs of becoming a diplomat, or someone skilled in international relations. Annan received his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1961. Shortly after completing his studies at Macalester College, Annan headed for Geneva, Switzerland, where he attended graduate classes in economics at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales.
International diplomat Kofi Annan of Ghana is the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations (UN), the multinational organization created to, among other things, maintain world peace. He is the first black African to head that organization and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001. He was awarded the Peace Prize for having revitalized the UN and for having given priority to human rights.
The Nobel Committee also recognized his commitment to the struggle to containing the spread of HIV in Africa and his declared opposition to international terrorism.
Noted for his cautious style of diplomacy, Annan is sometimes criticized for his soft-spokenness, which some say may be mistaken for weakness.
Kofi Annan first married Titi Alakija, a Nigerian woman, in 1965. Together they had a daughter, Ama, and a son, Kojo.
Annan separated with Titi in the late seventies but he remained an involved parent and lived with his son Kojo for a while after his separation with the mother. He later married Nane Lagergren, a lawyer at the U.N. who was also Divorced with a young daughter.