Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, former first lady of the West African country Ghana, is being remembered as an activist and women’s advocate by many around the world.
Ms. Agyeman-Rawlings passed away on Oct. 23 at the age of 76 at the Ridge Hospital in the capital city of Accra after falling ill. She was the wife of Ghana’s longest-serving leader, Jerry John Rawlings, who died on November 12, 2020.
In response to the former first lady’s passing, Ghana’s current President, John Mahama, declared three days of national mourning. Agyeman-Rawlings, the dynamic politician and influential women’s advocate, leaves behind a significant legacy in both Ghanaian politics and social development.
I met and interviewed Agyeman-Rawlings during her husband’s 1992 presidential race. Ed Brown, Imam Jamil-Al-Amin’s (formerly H. Rap Brown) older brother, who was monitoring Ghana’s elections, introduced me to the first lady. My interview of her appeared on the cover of the Philadelphia Tribune.
Agyeman-Rawlings was born on November 17, 1948, in Cape Coast, Ghana’s Central Region. In 1984, she founded the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM), an influential non-governmental organization focused on women’s empowerment, education, and economic independence.
According to Ghanaweb.com, DWM was named in commemoration of her husband’s second successful military coup/revolution in 1981. “Under her leadership, the movement became one of Ghana’s most impactful advocacy groups, promoting women’s participation in business, politics, and community development,” the website noted.
Under her leadership, the DWM increased Ghana’s women’s movement to a national scale. Not only did DWM address “systemic gender inequality” in Ghana, but “across the African region.”
According to ModernGhana.com, as a result of the work of the DWM, “Ghana became the first nation to adopt the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991 due to the movement’s efforts.
Which also helped to significantly boost the number of women in Parliament in the early 1990s, and many women’s lives were changed by its grassroots activism, emphasis on self-reliance and dignity, and enduring impact on Ghana’s social and political scene.”
The 2022 book “John Rawlings: Leadership and Legacy: A Pan-African Perspective” also commended the work and efforts of Agyeman-Rawlings.
“Under the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) that held power from 1981 through to 1992, also led by Jerry J. Rawlings, there was a strong commitment to women’s political inclusion, particularly under the auspices of the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM), as led by the wife of President Rawlings.
The movement revived women’s organizing at a national scale and permeated every region and district of Ghana with a large following,” the authors wrote.
Agyeman-Rawlings was educated at Achimota School and later attended the University of Science and Technology (now KNUST), where she specialized in textiles and earned a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. She continued her studies abroad, obtaining a diploma in interior design from the London College of Arts, Ghanaweb.com reported.
In addition, she received a diploma in advanced personnel management from Ghana’s Management Development and Productivity Institute (1979) and a certificate in development from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (1991). In 1994, she pursued a senior fellow diploma in policy studies at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
In 2016, at the age of 70, Agyeman-Rawlings was the only female in Ghana’s presidential race. She led the National Democratic Party (NDP), a breakaway faction from the National Democratic Congress, of which her husband was the founder.
“She was the first woman to successfully make it to the ballot paper since Ghana returned to multi-party democracy in 1992,” noted Africanews.com.
Agyeman-Rawlings wrote a book in 2018 titled “It Takes A Woman.” In it, she expressed her concern about the challenges faced under gender inequality. “What quickly became striking to me was that so long as women were subjugated to the periphery of the national economy, our revolution was incomplete.
No economy can turn around and grow by excluding any part of its people. In a society where women remained the most vulnerable to abuse, domestic violence and poverty, protection was essential. But this was a task too large and too important to be left alone to the government,” she wrote.
National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, and his wife, Mother Khadijah Farrakhan, loved and had a special relationship with President Jerry John Rawlings and First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, and the feeling was mutual.
Minister Farrakhan wrote a special letter to the Ghanaian first lady and the Rawlings children, Zanetor Rawlings, Yaa Asantewaa Rawlings, Amina Rawlings, and Kimathi Rawlings, upon the passing of former President Rawlings in 2020. He referred to the former president as “a great noble brother.”
During a phone interview with the former Nation of Islam Protocol Director Claudette Marie Muhammad, she said she first met Agyeman-Rawlings in 1977 during her first visit to Ghana.
Sister Claudette Marie said after arriving in the capital city, Accra, she took a bus to Kumasi, and sought an audience with the Asantehene, the traditional ruler, which she received. Afterward, she said, while visiting friends in Kumasi, she was introduced to Agyeman-Rawlings.
She said the next time she met with Agyeman-Rawlings, “she was officially the first lady of Ghana.”
In helping to prepare for Minister Farrakhan’s visit to Ghana for the Nation of Islam’s 1994 International Saviours’ Day, Sis. Claudette Marie said she was part of the advance team organizing the event.
Discussing her interactions with Agyeman-Rawlings, Sis. Claudette Marie said Mother Khadijah Farrakhan and a group of M.G.T. and G.C.C. (Muslim women of the Nation of Islam) held a social gathering on the beach in Ghana. “She (Agyeman-Rawlings) hosted us, and was very kind and very nice,” Sis. Claudette Marie reflected.
Follow Jehron Muhammad @africawatchfcn on X.