Ghana’s former First Woman Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings has died on the age of 76.
She was the widow of Ghana’s longest-serving chief, Jerry John Rawlings, who died 5 years in the past.
He led two coups earlier than twice being elected president in multiparty polls.
Social media is awash with tributes to the previous first girl, politician and girls’s rights advocate, who Ghanaian presidential spokesperson Felix Kwakye Ofosu mentioned had died after a brief sickness on Thursday morning.
Her household visited President John Mahama within the afternoon to formally notify him of her demise. The president leads the Nationwide Democratic Congress (NDC) get together, based by Jerry Rawlings after he took energy.
Agyeman-Rawlings additionally had political ambitions – however misplaced out in her bid to turn into the NDC’s presidential candidate in 2012.
As first girl, she based the thirty first December Girls’s Motion to empower girls and educate them earn cash to develop their communities. It was named after the date of her husband’s second coup, which happened in 1981.
Born in November 1948, Agyeman-Rawlings got here from a middle-class household and grew up within the metropolis of Cape Coast.
She met her future husband when she grew to become a boarder on the prestigious Achimota College within the capital, Accra.
In contrast to her husband, she went on to get a college schooling, finding out artwork and textiles.
Jerry Rawlings joined the air pressure and earned the rank of flight lieutenant in 1978 – a 12 months after the couple have been married.
It was not lengthy afterwards that Rawlings, aged 32, took energy, along with his spouse mentioned to be an essential adviser to him.
Younger, glamourous and charismatic, they proved a dynamic if controversial duo within the West African nation.
The previous first girl’s girls’s group, initially considered an arm of the NDC, is credited with considerably serving to girls throughout the nation – particularly in poorer areas.
Her advocacy additionally influenced nationwide coverage and he or she performed a key function in shaping a legislation in 1989 that assured inheritance rights for ladies and kids.
She can be credited with contributing to provisions for gender equality in Ghana’s 1992 structure, which noticed the return of multiparty politics.
Ghana’s parliament has adjourned to mark the previous first girl’s demise because the nation prepares to formally mourn certainly one of its most iconic political figures and one who fought for the inclusion of girls in politics.
