Kofi Annan

Kofi Atta Annan was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006, the first from sub-Saharan Africa and the first elected from the UN's own staff. He and the UN shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.

Early life and education

He was born on 8 April 1938 in Fante New Town, Kumasi, with a twin sister, Efua Atta, into a Fante family whose grandfathers and uncle were paramount chiefs. He attended Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast from 1954 to 1957 and studied at the Kumasi College of Science and Technology before a Ford Foundation grant took him to Macalester College in Minnesota, where he earned a BA in economics in 1961. He studied at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and in 1972 earned a master's degree in management from the MIT Sloan School.

UN career

He joined the UN system in 1962 at the World Health Organization in Geneva and worked in many UN posts, including in budget, personnel and refugee affairs. From March 1992 to December 1996 he was Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, a period that included the failures in Rwanda and Bosnia. The Security Council chose him as Secretary-General on 13 December 1996, and he was re-elected for a second term in 2001.

Secretary-General

He reformed the UN bureaucracy, made the fight against HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa, a priority, launched the UN Global Compact with business and championed the Millennium Development Goals. He opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and faced calls to resign after the inquiry into the Oil-for-Food Programme, which largely cleared him of personal wrongdoing. Ban Ki-moon succeeded him on 1 January 2007.

After the UN

He set up the Kofi Annan Foundation in 2007 and chaired The Elders, the group founded by Nelson Mandela. In 2008 he mediated the end of Kenya's post-election violence. In 2012 he was the UN and Arab League envoy on Syria, resigning after months of deadlock, and in 2016 he led a commission on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.

Family and death

He married Titi Alakija of Nigeria in 1965; they had two children, Ama and Kojo, before divorcing. In 1984 he married the Swedish lawyer and artist Nane Lagergren, whose daughter Nina he raised. He died in Bern, Switzerland, on 18 August 2018 and was buried in Accra after a state funeral in September 2018.