Ghana’s former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, who died last month at the age of 77, was the matriarch of Ghanaian women’s empowerment. (Wikimedia Commons)
Ghana’s former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, who died last month at the age of 77, was the matriarch of Ghanaian women’s empowerment and an enduring example of women’s political awakening in Africa and beyond.
While the name Konadu has different interpretations, one of the meanings is to “fight to the end”, and Nana lived up to it. She was never content with the gilded passivity once associated with previous first ladies in the country. She turned the role into a political and social force, one that still shapes how Ghana thinks about women, power, and public life.
Born in Cape Coast in 1948 to statesman J.O.T. Agyeman and educator Felicia Agyeman, Nana embodied a sense of purpose from childhood. She attended Achimota School where she was an elected prefect and went on to pursue her first degree in Art and Textiles at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.
She later earned a diploma in interior design from the London College of Arts and worked briefly with the Union Trading Company in Switzerland before returning to Ghana, where her life entered a new chapter.
In 1977, she married Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, and within two years found herself First Lady of a revolutionary state.
From the start, she refused to be ornamental. Inspired by Ghana’s grassroots women’s groups and feminist writings, she envisioned an organisation that would turn rhetoric about “the people” into tangible progress for women.
In 1982, she founded the 31 December Women’s Movement (DWM), a network that spread through Ghana’s towns and villages, symbolised by its red berets and relentless energy.
At a time when adult literacy for rural women was below 30%, the DWM built more than 870 preschools and launched adult education and health initiatives. It taught women to read and write, offered nutrition training and vaccination drives, and supported small enterprises through micro-credit and vocational workshops.
The Movement also contributed to legal reform, including lobbying for the 1985 Intestate Succession Law, which guaranteed widows’ rights to inheritance, and Ghana’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991. By the early 1990s, the movement claimed more than two million members.
When asked what drove her, Nana answered: “My desire is to see the emancipation of women at every level of development, to enable them to contribute and benefit from the socio-economic and political progress of the country.”
Ever purposeful, she later gained certificates in personnel management and attended Johns Hopkins University in 1995 for a fellowship on philanthropic leadership. Those studies reinforced her conviction that African women had to build their own institutions rather than wait for donors or governments.
Yet her drive drew criticisms. The DWM’s close ties to her husband’s ruling PNDC and later the NDC blurred the lines between civic activism and politics. Critics accused her and the movement of monopolising state support, favouring loyalists, and for doing nothing to prevent some of the atrocities of Rawlings’ administration against women.
She brushed off detractors with a mixture of charm and stubborn pride: “Women’s vital role of promoting peace in the family, the country and the world at large must be acknowledged,” she maintained. “And to do this, they must be empowered politically.”
Her ambition eventually led her from activism into formal politics. In 2009 she became the NDC’s first vice-chair. Two years later, she challenged President John Atta Mill for the party’s presidential nomination. Dubbed the “Showdown in Sunyani,” the election ended with Mills garnering 96.9 per cent to her 3.1 per cent.
She left the NDC in 2012 to form the National Democratic Party (NDP), which fielded her as Ghana’s first female presidential candidate in 2016. Gaining only 0.16 per cent of the vote, she bowed out of politics with the same composure that had marked her entrance.
In 2018 Nana released her memoir titled, It Takes a Woman which reveals both candour and introspection. She admits missteps and defends the DWM as a catalyst for women’s empowerment. Reviewed favourably by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the book embodies her conviction that gender equality could not be achieved through tokenism or charity, but only through political participation and structural change.
When Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings died on 23 October 2025, tributes flowed from across Ghana’s political spectrum, civil society, and the wider public. President John Dramani Mahama ordered flags to be lowered at half-mast, stating that: “this is in honour of her memory and in recognition of her distinguished service to our nation.”
Nana Konadu’s legacy is inevitably mixed. She blurred boundaries between the personal and the political, revolution and reform, privilege and service. The idea that a First Lady could shape policy, drive legislation, and mobilise millions owes much to her example. She transformed the invisible role of the presidential spouse into a platform for national development.
In the wider African and global context, she stood in a rare sisterhood of politically active first ladies – from Mozambique’s Graça Machel to Nigeria’s Maryam Babangida and even beyond Africa to figures like Hillary Clinton – women who turned the “soft power” of their position into visible agency.
Despite her inability to secure a formal public office after her first ladyship, Nana’s legacy remains solid. The literacy classes, health clinics, and preschools she helped establish still serve communities decades later. Many women who entered public life in Ghana from the 1980s did so following her example and the space she carved out – one she paid for in criticism and controversy alike.
Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings fought till the end. In refusing to be ceremonial, she left a nation forever altered by her determination to make women visible, vocal, and indispensable to Ghana’s story. Forever a matriarch of women’s empowerment in Ghana and beyond.
Dr. Kofi Bediako is a Researcher and Tutor at the University of Melbourne in Australia