― Dr. Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings: Addressing the 23rd Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly (Beijing +5); attended by over 2000 women’s groups and NGOs worldwide. June 5th, 2000, New York, USA
Former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, is on a mission to empower a generation, one woman at a time. As the founder and President of the 31st December Women’s Movement, a grassroots NGO, Nana Rawlings is a firm believer that women hold the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. For nearly three decades, she has been at the forefront of women empowerment. During her tenure as Ghana’s First Lady (1981 – 2001), Mrs. Rawlings crisscrossed the globe raising a new level of awareness on gender issues in Africa. Through her skillful ability to achieve concrete, measurable results and convey them on platforms, globally, she gained international prominence as a leading activist for African women.
Mobilising more than two million women across Ghana—from small-scale, village level, economic projects to standing for parliamentary elections—her organization, the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM) became one of Ghana’s earliest and most successful examples of a progressive grassroots women’s movement. Since its inception in 1982, Mrs. Rawlings became the first wife of an African Head of State or President to use an organisational platform to systematically fight gender inequality and empower millions of women across Ghana and beyond.
Today Mrs. Rawlings is considered one of Africa’s most socially progressive and influential female politicians and is the recipient of an honorary doctorate degree from Lincoln University (USA) for her achievements towards the economic advancement and empowerment of women internationally. Most recently (Jan. 2010), she was elected in a landslide victory as the First Vice-Chairman of Ghana’s ruling party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), of which her husband, former President Jerry John Rawlings, is the founding father.
Emanating from her seemingly effortless ability to be both a hard line politician and a passionate agent for change for the poor, the voiceless and the under-served populations in Africa, her power is not something she wields. It’s something she is. Authentic. Smart. Unpretentious. Forthright. Engaging. There isn’t a prediction or forecast broad enough to encompass her energy, vibrancy and her ability to connect with people of all social levels. Such traits are the by-product of her confidence, wisdom and openness to the inclusion of all people. Her leadership style has served as a pioneering model for improving gender equity, equality and the empowerment of grassroots women in Africa. When purpose aligns itself with the character to serve the greater good, authentic power takes over. Such are the coordinates of where Nana Rawlings stands today.
Life before Politics
Activism for Nana Rawlings began in the tumultuous days of revolution when her husband, Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, took over as Ghana’s Head of State on December 31st, 1981. His popular rise to power followed more than a decade of economic devastation, political crisis and mass human suffering under a series of corrupt civilian (1969 -1972) and military regimes (1972 -1979). With the aim of rebuilding Ghana from the grassroots, and returning power to the people, Jerry Rawlings spearheaded a revolution that was aimed at wiping out corruption among the power elites and restoring Ghana’s shattered economy.
On the streets of Accra, the country’s transportation system had broken down. There was no reliable power grid and only a handful of paved roads were undamaged by massive potholes. Inflation had soared and food was so scarce that a tin of milk or a loaf of bread required standing in long lines for as much as five hours or more. Mrs. Rawlings recalls, “Much like the rest of the country, I was relieved that someone was finally strong and brave enough to risk his life for truth, social justice and the larger good of the nation. But I also knew my life would never be the same.”
Prior to public life, Nana Konadu had been working professionally (1972 – 1979) in Ghana as an interior decorator with the Union Trading Company (UTC), a large Swiss trading firm, where she rose to the rank of Group Manager. Her responsibilities included UTC showrooms, window displays and corporate housing units throughout Ghana. In 1975, her work took her to Switzerland for 18 months on attachment to Jelmoli, then Switzerland’s largest department store, as an administrator and interior decorator.
Upon returning to Ghana, Nana Konadu and Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings exchanged wedding vows in a church wedding in 1977. Even after marriage, Mrs. Rawlings continued advancing in her career as the senior administrator of UTC’s Display Department. She recalls, “Given that the country was in such steep decline, I considered myself lucky to even have a job. What’s more, I was one of only a handful of Ghanaian women working among the professional ranks at UTC. Still, much like the rest of the country, we were struggling.”
In 1978, at the height of the nation’s collapse, Nana Konadu was expecting the couple’s first child, Zanetor. During her pregnancy, however, it was not uncommon to find the halls of the Military Hospital plunged into darkness, due to power outages, with only partial lighting provided by the aid of a generator and the flickering light of lanterns carried around by hospital staffers.
While power outages were intermittent, deprivation was constant. The hospital had no bed sheets, no painkillers, no sanitary towels, no syringes, no cotton wool, not even a light bulb in the labour and delivery room to guide the medical staff as she struggled through labour. If she wanted any of these comforts, she would have to supply them on her own. And, fortunately, she could. Weeks before she went into labour, Nana Konadu and Jerry made the four hour journey by road into neighbouring Togo to buy the list of hospital supplies suggested by their doctor.
She recalls, “All the while, I could only think of the blinding fluorescence of public facilities in Switzerland. From Swiss banks to shopping centres to public universities, high-quality lighting and overflows of supplies filled every facility in abundance. I could only imagine the hospital delivery wards: the blankets, pink or blue, the menu of painkillers, doctors in white coats and sanitary gloves, tending to patients under the hard white hospital light. How much different was it in the hushed, dark tensions of Ghana.”
As the economy fell apart, senior military officers continued to increase their ill-gotten riches at the expense of the poor and starving masses. While men monopolized power at all levels of development, it was women (and their children) who suffered the most from poor judgment and weak governance. Yet women were the backbone of the rural economy.
In Ghana, as throughout most of Africa, women account for more than fifty percent the population producing more than seventy percent of the nation’s food crops, which make them the largest part of the nation’s economic efforts. Adding to that, many of these women bear the sole responsibility for raising the children, feeding their families and providing care for the elderly in their communities.
Despite their major contributions to family, community, and food security for the nation, their dire living conditions and basic needs for sustainable development had never been placed on the national agenda or even prioritised as a part of the nation’s development needs.
“At the Military Hospital, I witnessed the miraculous delivery of a newborn through the birth canal of a very beautiful, but very young, girl, who had been rushed into the hospital for urgent medical care, but with no medical supplies ─ and probably no history of prenatal care. Although the baby she delivered was healthy, I was traumatised the next day by news of her death ‘due to complications beyond the hospital’s capacity.’
“By the time I gave birth to my first child I was an exception: I was 29, married and college educated with a university degree in graphic design.” In rural Ghana, however, without access to education, it is not uncommon to find young girls who, by the ages of 12, 13 or 14, have been sold into marriage and given birth to multiple children within a few years. If you look at the generation before her, the story is likely the same – one of subjugation, marginalization and disempowerment, a formula for the vicious cycle of poverty.
Worse yet, Mrs. Rawlings notes, young girls are more likely to be the victims of outmoded customs, such as polygamy, trokosi (female sexual slavery), and painful genital cutting, a practice which could result in excessive bleeding and death of infant or adolescent victims. Once held sacred as a form of purification, this horrific practice is commonly known today as female genital mutilation (FGM). “These customs are not only inhumane; they’re tools of oppression and subjugation that render African women and girls subservient, docile and exploitable,” she asserts. As a result, young women become socialised to think their ideas, personal struggles, and needs for greater equality are of no interest or consequence to the world around them.
Viewed through this lens, Nana Rawlings is convinced that the leading difference between her situation and those of rural women starts with access to education—from girlhood throughout young adulthood. “Education imparts a desire for a better life, the knowledge that such a life exists, and a basic framework for how to attain that life,” she explains. “Without it, however, young girls are groomed to be nothing other than the perfect wives and mothers, and any thoughts or aspirations beyond that, is fiercely discouraged and in some cases, even shunned.”
As the former First Lady sees it, a woman who is enlightened about the world around her is empowered to engage confidently in her own self development before entering into marriage. This provides a strong foundation that will allow her to make better, more informed, choices for herself and, more importantly, for the generation she raises.
These socio-cultural problems are only a slice of the gender inequities that have fuelled Mrs. Rawlings’s passion for social reform and women’s empowerment. “I instinctively understood that in order to help women escape from the clutches of oppression, I had to reject and publicly denounce the outmoded customs of generations past (e.g. as trokosi, FGM and child marriage, etc.) that have served as traditional barriers for women’s progress.” When it came to tackling issues that affect women in particular, her model for revolution was deliberately different: “It starts with ONE woman who says ‘enough is enough’, ONE family at a time, and continues onward from ONE generation to the other. That is how we measure long-term success—by the multiplier effect of empowering ONE woman.”
A Lineage of Doers & Leaders
Nana Konadu Agyeman (maiden name) was born in Cape Coast in Ghana’s Central Region on November 17, 1948. She is a direct descendent of the Ashanti Royal family in Kumasi, the former centre of an empire that once controlled much of present-day Ghana. Both her mother and father hail from a long line of royal ancestry with a proud tradition of leadership. Her father’s uncle was the great king of Asante, Nana Agyeman Prempeh I, who was exiled by the British in 1897 to the Seychelles Island, where he was later joined by the famed and venerable Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa.
As the third-born of seven children ─ six girls and one boy ─ Nana Konadu grew up in a prosperous and well-educated family in the 1950’s Gold Coast (Ghana before independence). Her father, John Osei-Tutu Agyeman, was a prominent and widely respected businessman, who always stressed the importance of education and independent thinking to Nana and her five sisters.
After obtaining a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, Mr. Agyeman became one of the first Africans in the Gold Coast to work at the senior levels of management within the United Africa Company (UAC), a colossal British trading firm that was a branch of Unilever. He was later recruited into government by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, as a top commerce executive and business advisor to the nation’s first post-colonial administration.
Her mother, Felicia Agyeman, was an educator, whose career in the classroom ended abruptly when she married Nana’s father. In the days of colonialism, British law mandated that married women stay home and look after their husband and children. So Mrs. Agyeman was forced to abandon the classroom and the teaching career she loved the moment she married her husband. Still, Nana’s mother made good use of her professional skills inside the home, where she often home-schooled Nana Konadu, her six siblings and several cousins from Nana’s father’s large extended family.
Young Nana Konadu attended a series of elite public and private schools, including the British-established Achimota Secondary School, where she had her first encounter with Jerry Rawlings in 1961. The Agyemans’ good fortune prompted Nana’s parents to continuously take in and support the children of struggling relatives. Her mother was strict, yet full of compassion she says, always putting food, clothing, and other basic provisions away for relatives in need.
She emphasises that her mother was probably the strongest influence on her. In Nana’s words, “It was she, by her concern for the poor and the disadvantaged, who helped me to discover my interest in social reform. Perhaps this explains why, amidst the tumult of revolution in the early 1980’s, I discovered a powerful pull and personal calling in the world of politics. My recognition of injustices against women and the poor in our society ignited my early desire for social change.”
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