Ghana is mourning the death of former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, a pioneering advocate for women’s empowerment and wife of the late President Jerry John Rawlings. She died on Thursday morning at age 76 after a short illness, according to government officials and family sources. The former first lady passed away nearly five years after her husband’s death in 2020. Together, they were one of Ghana’s most influential political couples, shaping the country’s modern history through both revolution and reform.
Born in November 1948 in Cape Coast, Agyeman-Rawlings attended Achimota School and later studied Art and Textiles at the University of Science and Technology (now KNUST). She met Jerry Rawlings in Accra, and the two married in 1977, two years before he staged his first coup. As first lady from 1981 to 2001, she founded the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM), which mobilized and trained thousands of women in small-scale enterprises, literacy, and leadership. The group became one of the most powerful grassroots women’s organizations in West Africa, advocating for economic independence and political inclusion.
Her activism helped shape key women’s rights reforms, including Ghana’s Intestate Succession Law of 1989, which guaranteed inheritance rights for widows and children, and gender equality provisions in the 1992 Constitution. In 2012, Agyeman-Rawlings sought the presidency herself, becoming the first woman to contest the office under her own party, the National Democratic Party (NDP) after breaking away from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) founded by her husband. Though unsuccessful, her campaign cemented her reputation as a determined and outspoken political figure.
Tributes have poured in from across Ghana’s political spectrum. President John Mahama received her family at the Jubilee House, while Parliament adjourned its sitting in her honor. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings leaves behind four children, including Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, an NDC Member of Parliament for Klottey Korle. Flags are expected to fly at half-mast as the nation prepares a state funeral to honor a woman remembered for her courage, conviction, and lasting impact on women’s empowerment in Ghana.
