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FORMER UN CHIEF KOFI ANNAN PASSES ON, AT AGE 80

Kofi Atta Annan was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, from January 1997 to December 2006.

The 80-year-old “passed away on Saturday after a short illness”, the foundation named after him said.

Annan served two terms as UN chief from 1997 to 2006, and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.

Annan later served as the UN special envoy for Syria, leading efforts to find a solution to the conflict.

In a statement announcing his death, the Kofi Annan Foundation described him as a global statesman and deeply committed internationalist who fought throughout his life for a fairer and more peaceful world”.

“Wherever there was suffering or need, he reached out and touched many people with his deep compassion and empathy.”

Remembering the world’s top diplomat

Atta Annan, the only black African to become UN secretary-general, died in hospital in the Swiss city of Bern.

He had been living near Geneva for several years.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 for helping to revitalise the international body, during a period that coincided with the Iraq War and the HIV/Aids pandemic.

The former UN chief was born in the Kofandros section of Kumasi in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) on 8 April 1938.

Annan attended the elite Mfantsipim school, a Methodist boarding school in Cape Coast founded in the 1870s. Atta Annan said that the school taught him “that suffering anywhere concerns people everywhere”.

In 1957, the year Annan graduated from Mfantsipim, the Gold Coast gained independence from the UK and began using the name “Ghana”.

In 1958, Annan began studying economics at the Kumasi College of Science and Technology, now the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He received a Ford Foundation grant, enabling him to complete his undergraduate studies in economics at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota United States, in 1961. Annan then completed a diplôme d’études approfondies DEA degree in International Relations at The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1961–62. After some years of work experience, he studied at the MIT Sloan School of Management (1971–72) in the Sloan Fellows program and earned a master’s degree in management.

Annan was fluent in English, French, Akan, some Kru languages and other African languages.

Kofi Annan’s wife, Nane, was by his side when he died today 18 August 2018 at a hospital in Bern, Switzerland following a short illness.

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