WORLD ACADEMY OF INFORMATICS AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCES
ISSN : 2278-1315
COVER STORY
TRIBUTE TO WORLD’S GREAT LEADER KOFFI A. ANNAN
Tripti Ranjan
WAIMS Academic Press
Kofi Atta Annan (8 April 1938 – 18 August 2018) was a
Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-
General of the United Nations, from January 1997 to December
2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001
Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the
Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an
international organization founded by Nelson Mandela. Annan
went on to study economics at Macalester College,
international relations from the Graduate Institute Geneva and
management at MIT. Annan joined the UN in 1962, working for
the World Health Organization's Geneva office. He went on to
work in several capacities at the UN Headquarters including
serving as the Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping
between March 1992 and December 1996.
He was appointed as the Secretary-General on 13 December 1996 by the Security Council, and later confirmed by the General
Assembly, making him the first office holder to be elected from the UN staff itself. He was re-elected for a second term in 2001,
and was succeeded as Secretary-General by Ban Ki-moon on 1 January 2007. As the Secretary-General, Annan reformed the UN
bureaucracy; worked to combat HIV, especially in Africa; and launched the UN Global Compact. He was criticized for not
expanding the Security Council and faced calls for resignation after an investigation into the Oil-for-Food Programme, but was
largely exonerated of personal corruption. After the end of his term as UN Secretary-General, he founded the Kofi Annan
Foundation in 2007 to work on international development. In 2012, Annan was the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative
for Syria, to help find a resolution to the ongoing conflict there. Annan quit after becoming frustrated with the UN's lack of
progress with regard to conflict resolution. In September 2016, Annan was later appointed to lead a UN commission to
investigate the Rohingya crisis.
EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION
Kofi Annan was born in the Kofandros section of Kumasi in
complete his undergraduate studies in economics at
the Gold Coast (now Ghana) on 8 April 1938. His twin
Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States, in
sister Efua Atta, who died in 1991, shared the middle name
1961. Annan then completed a diplôme d'études approfondies
Atta, which in the Akan language means 'twin'. Annan and
DEA degree in International Relations at The Graduate
his sister were born into one of the country's Ashanti and
Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva,
Fante aristocratic families; both of their grandfathers and
Switzerland, from 1961–62. After some years of work
their uncle were tribal chiefs. In the Akan names tradition,
experience, he studied at the MIT Sloan School of
some children are named according to the day of the week
Management (1971–72) in the Sloan Fellows program and
on which they were born, sometimes in relation to how
earned a master's degree in management. Annan was fluent in
many children precede them. Kofi in Akan is the name that
English, French, Akan, and some Kru languages as well as
corresponds with Friday. Annan said that his surname
other African languages.
rhymes with "cannon" in English. From 1954 to 1957,
CAREER
Annan attended the elite Mfantsipim school, a Methodist
In 1962, Kofi A. Annan started working as a budget officer
boarding school in Cape Coast founded in the 1870s. Annan
for the World Health Organization, an agency of the United
said that the school taught him "that suffering anywhere
Nations (UN). From 1974 to 1976, he worked as a manager of
concerns people everywhere". In 1957, the year Annan
the state-owned Ghana Tourist Development Company in
graduated from Mfantsipim, the Gold Coast gained
Accra. In 1980 he became the head of personnel for the office
independence from the UK and began using the name
of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in
"Ghana". In 1958, Annan began studying economics at the
Geneva. In 1983 he became the director of administrative
Kumasi College of Science and Technology, now the
management services of the UN Secretariat in New York. In
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology of
1987, Annan was appointed as an Assistant Secretary-General
Ghana.
for Human Resources Management and Security Coordinator
He received a Ford Foundation grant, enabling him to
for the UN system. In 1990, he became Assistant Secretary-
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