Ofure Akhigbe
Ghana’s former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, has died at the age of 76.
The government confirmed that Agyeman-Rawlings passed away on Thursday, 23 October 2025, at the Ridge Hospital in Accra after a short illness. Her family has appealed for privacy as they mourn.
In honour of the late former First Lady, the Government of Ghana has declared a national holiday and a period of mourning, while Parliament has adjourned its sittings in her memory. Flags are to be flown at half-mast across the country until further notice.
Agyeman-Rawlings was the widow of Jerry John Rawlings, Ghana’s longest-serving leader, who died five years ago. He led two coups before being elected president twice under democratic rule, serving from 1981 to 2001.
Born in November 1948 in Cape Coast, Nana Konadu came from a middle-class family and attended the prestigious Achimota School in Accra, where she met her future husband. She later studied art and textiles at university. The couple married in 1977, and Rawlings, then a flight lieutenant, rose to national prominence the following year when he led his first coup.
As First Lady, Nana Konadu became one of Ghana’s most influential women. She founded the 31st December Women’s Movement, named after the date of her husband’s second coup in 1981, to empower women and promote economic self-reliance in communities across the country.
Her activism extended beyond grassroots mobilisation. She was instrumental in shaping the 1989 law guaranteeing inheritance rights for women and children, and in pushing for gender equality provisions in the 1992 Constitution, which marked Ghana’s return to multiparty democracy.
In 2012, she made an unsuccessful bid to become the NDC’s presidential candidate, cementing her reputation as a formidable political figure in her own right.
Tributes have poured in from across Ghana’s political divide. President John Mahama, who currently leads the NDC founded by her husband, received the Rawlings family at the Jubilee House on Thursday afternoon following her death. The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) also expressed “shock and disbelief,” describing her as “a trailblazer for women in leadership.”
Funeral arrangements are expected to be announced after consultations between her family and the government.
Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings is remembered as a pioneer of women’s empowerment, a devoted public servant, and one of the most iconic figures in Ghana’s political history.