📍Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana
1938 – 1957“I was born in Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti region of the Gold Coast, in April 1938, a few minutes apart from my twin sister, Efua. In our Akan culture twins are thought special, and my name, Kofi, means a boy born on a Friday. My family was part of the country's educated elite; both my grandfathers and an uncle were traditional chiefs, and my father, Henry Reginald Annan, worked for a large trading company and was later made governor of the Ashanti region. Kumasi was a busy market city, the old seat of the Asante kings, full of traders, family compounds and churches. My father was a quiet, principled man who taught us that you can be firm without raising your voice, and to treat everyone, whatever their position, with respect. Our home was full of relatives, and I grew up between Fante and Asante traditions, learning to listen to more than one side of a story. At fifteen I went to Mfantsipim, a Methodist boarding school in Cape Coast, where a teacher's lesson stayed with me for life: that suffering anywhere concerns people everywhere. I left school in 1957, the year the Gold Coast became Ghana, the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win its independence, and the hope of that moment carried me forward. I studied at the college of science and technology in Kumasi, then in America and Geneva, and spent my working life at the United Nations, becoming Secretary-General in 1997 and sharing the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today