State Burial for Kofi Annan slated for Sept 13

President Akufo-Addo has proposed September 13, 2018, for the state burial of the late former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.

President Akufo-Addo made the proposal when the family of the late UN Chief called on him at the Jubilee House in Accra on Friday, 24 August 2018.

Touching on the place of burial, Nana Akufo-Addo said, “Burma Camp has created a new cemetery and there is a portion that has been allocated for VIPs; civilian VIPs and I think it will be the most appropriate place to lay him to rest… That will be the arrangement of the state. This is a state funeral, so, the responsibility for the arrangements are that of the Ghanaian state. Your bit is to mourn, but you will not have any of the financial burdens involved in organizing such a thing; that will be borne by the state of Ghana”.

The President further revealed that the government will hold a state burial for Kofi Annan and will bear the full cost of the event.

Profile about Kofi Annan

International diplomat Kofi Annan of Ghana is the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations (UN), the multinational organization created to, among other things, maintain world peace. He is the first black African to head that organization and was awarded the Nobel Prize. Noted for his cautious style of diplomacy, Annan is sometimes criticized for his soft-spokenness, which some say may be mistaken for weakness.

A worldly scholar
Kofi Atta Annan was born in Kumasi, in central Ghana, Africa, on April 8, 1938. Since 1960 Ghana has been a republic within the British Commonwealth, a group of nations dependent on Great Britain. Named for an African empire along the Niger River, Ghana was ruled by Great Britain for 113 years as the Gold Coast. Annan is descended from tribal chiefs on both sides of his family. His father was an educated man, and Annan became accustomed to both traditional and modern ways of life. He has described himself as being “atribal in a tribal world.”

After receiving his early education at a leading boarding school in Ghana, Annan attended the College of Science and Technology in the capital of Kumasi. At the age of twenty, he won a Ford Foundation scholarship for undergraduate studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he studied economics. Even then he was showing signs of becoming a diplomat, or someone skilled in international relations. Annan received his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1961. Shortly after completing his studies at Macalester College, Annan headed for Geneva, Switzerland, where he attended graduate classes in economics at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales.