Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, the longest-serving First Lady of Ghana, has passed on. She died on Thursday morning on Oct 23, 2025, in Accra.
She was 76. (born November 17, 1948)
She became the first woman to run for President of Ghana in 2016, and in 2018, she launched her first book titled “It Takes a Woman.”
Reports say the wife of late President Jerry John Rawlings, died at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, also known as Ridge Hospital, this morning.
The former Fist Lady is the longest to have served in that position from June 4, 1979 to September 24, 1979 under the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and from December 31, 1981 to January 6, 1993 under the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), two military regimes headed by her husband, and from January 7, 1993 to January 6, 2001 when former President Jerry John Rawlings had his two terms as a civilian Head of State.
Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings was born in Cape Coast in the Central Region.
She attended Ghana International School and later moved to the Achimota School, where she met Jerry John Rawlings, who later became her husband.
She went on to study Art and Textiles at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi.
She was a student leader of her hall of residence, Africa Hall at KNUST.
In 1975, she earned an interior design diploma from the London College of Arts.
Nana Konadu further pursued her education, acquiring a diploma in advanced personnel management from Ghana’s Management Development and Productivity Institute in 1979 and a certificate in development from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration in 1991.
Nana Konadu also took courses at Johns Hopkins University, the Institute for Policy Studies in Baltimore, USA, and received a certificate for a fellows programme in philanthropy and non-profit organisations.
In her first term as First Lady, she set up the December 31st December Women’s Movement in 1982.
She was elected First Vice Chairperson of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in 2009 and later in 2011, she unsuccessfully challenged then President John Evans Atta Mills for the party’s presidential candidate position for Election 2012 but lost.
