Kofi Annan

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Kofi Atta Annan (born April 8, 1938) is a Ghanaian diplomat and the seventh and current Secretary-General of the United Nations. Early years and family Annan was born to Henry Reginald and Victoria Annan on April 8, 1938, in the Kofandros section of Kumasi, Ghana. As with most Akan names, his name indicates his birthday and place in his family: Kofi indicates a boy born on a Friday, and Annan denotes that he was the fourth child of his family. Annan was a twin, an occurrence that is regarded as special in Ghanaian culture; his twin sister Efua Atta died in 1991. Atta means twin in Fante. Annan's family was part of the country's elite; both of his grandfathers and his uncle were tribal chiefs. His father was half Asante and half Fante; his mother was Fante. Annan's father worked for a long period as an export manager for the Lever Brothers cocoa company. Annan is married to Nane Maria Annan, a Swedish lawyer and artist who is the half-niece of Raoul Wallenberg. Of their three children, Kojo Annan and Ama Annan are from Kofi Annan's previous marriage with Titi Alakija. They divorced in the late 1970s. Their third child, Nina Cronstedt de Groot, is from a previous marriage of Nane Annan. Kojo Annan was in the headlines in 2005 because of his involvement in the Oil for Food program scandal. Education From 1954 to 1957, Annan attended the elite Mfantsipim School, a Methodist boarding school in Cape Coast founded in the 1870s. Annan has said that the school taught him "that suffering anywhere concerns people everywhere". In 1957, the year Annan graduated from Mfantsipim, Ghana became the first British colony in Sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence. In 1958, Annan began studying for a degree in economics at the Kumasi College of Science and Technology, now the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology of Ghana. He received a Ford Foundation grant, enabling him to complete his undergraduate studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States in 1961. Annan then studied at the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Institut universitaire des hautes études internationales IUHEI) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1961–62, later attending the MIT Sloan School of Management (1971–72) as a Sloan Fellow and receiving a Master of Science degree in management with a minor in poetry. Annan is fluent in English, French, Fante and other dialects of Akan, and other African languages. Early career Annan started working for the World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations, in 1962. From 1974 to 1976, Annan worked as the Director of Tourism in Ghana. Following that, he returned to work for the United Nations as an Assistant Secretary-General in three consecutive positions: Human Resources Management and Security Coordinator from 1987 to 1990, Program Planning, Budget and Finance, and Controller from 1990 to 1992, and Peacekeeping Operations from March 1993 to February 1994. In his book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, ex-General Roméo Dallaire claims that Annan was overly passive in his response to the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. He says that Annan, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations at that time, held back UN troops from intervening to settle the conflict and from providing more logistic and material support. Annan was then an Undersecretary-General until October 1995, when he was made a Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the former Yugoslavia, serving for five months in this capacity and returning to his duties as Undersecretary-General in April 1996.