Africa’s most celebrated global diplomat of diplomats and enigmatic symbol of United Nations, Kofi Atta Annan, who rose through the ranks to become the first Black African to become Secretary-General of the United Nations, died a week ago at the age of 80 years.
Both Kofi Atta Annan and his twin sister Efua Atta were born on April 8, 1938, to Victoria and Henry Reginald Annan in Kumasi, Ghana. Henry Reginald Annan was then an export manager for the Lever Brothers cocoa company. In fact, both his grandfathers and his uncle were tribal chiefs and young Kofi was raised in one of Ghana’s most aristocratic families.
He attended an elite boarding school in Kumasi, Ghana and was fluent in English, French and some African languages. Annan was later admitted to read economics at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. He later transferred to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, on a Ford Foundation grant to complete his first degree in economics.
He then went to Geneva to start his graduate studies in international affairs. It was from there that he began his U.N. career in 1962 when he joined as an administrative and budget officer with the World Health Organization (WHO). He went back to the U.S. in 1971 and took a master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. However, he took a short break from being an international civil servant when he worked as the director of tourism in Ghana from 1974 to 1976.
In the 1980s, Annan returned to work for the UN as an Assistant Secretary-General in three consecutive positions: Human resources management and security coordinator (1987-1990); programme planning, budget and finance, and controller (1990-1992); and peacekeeping operations (1993-1996). Before becoming the Secretary-General, he also served as Under-Secretary-
General.
Annan, an aristocrat by upbringing, spent most of his life career as an administrator in the UN where his diplomatic skills, charisma, brilliance, cool temper, mastery of language, sophistication in oratory and political savvy saw him to the top most UN job.
He started his first term on January 1, 1997 when he replaced the outgoing secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt. So popular was he that he was reappointed for a second term unanimously and started the second term on January 1, 2002.
His appointment as UN’s Secretary General came some six years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and during a decade when the world was virtually united over terrorism which seemed to have gripped it especially after the terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in the U.S. Annan’s uncontested re-election for a second term was unprecedented in the history of the U.N and was an indication of the total support which Annan enjoyed from both rich and poor countries.
A strong believer in gender equality, in 1998, Annan appointed a Canadian lady, Louise Frechette as the first deputy secretary-general, an indication of his desire to bring about more gender equality in the administration of the UN system.
However, in spite of his well acclaimed super skills as a diplomat, Annan was always candid and frank, a fact which put him at logger head with President George Bush’s administration particularly on the U.S invasion
of Iraq.
On learning of Annan’s death, the current U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said “Kofi Annan was a guiding force for good…In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations. He rose through the ranks to lead the organization into the new millennium with matchless dignity and determination.”
It will surprise many Nigerians that Annan first marriage was to a Nigerian lady, Titi Alakija, in 1965 and they had a daughter, Ama, and a son, Kojo. The couple separated in 1975. Annan later married his second wife, a Swedish lawyer, Nane Lagergren and they married in 1984.
