Kofi Annan Dead at 80: Seven Things You Didn't Know About CHARISMATIC FORMER UN LEADER!

Kofi Atta Annan, the first black African UN secretary-general, has died at the age of 80, diplomats have reported. The Ghanaian diplomat led the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. He won the Nobel Peace Prize alongside the organization in 2001, the award’s centennial year.

“Kofi Annan was a guiding force for good,” current UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. “It is with profound sadness that I learned of his passing. In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations. He rose through the ranks to lead the organization into the new millennium with matchless dignity and determination.”

Here are seven facts about the iconic diplomat you may not know:

1. Annan was born on April 8 1938 in Comassie, Gold Coast, now Kumasi, Ghana. He had a twin sister Efua Atta, who died in 1991. Their shared middle name “Atta” means “twin.”

2. The diplomat attended the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, before finishing up his undergraduate studies in the U.S. in 1961, a UN biography reports. He studied economics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He then continued studying economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Kofi Annan Dead at 80: Seven Things You Didn't Know About CHARISMATIC FORMER UN LEADER!

3. He began his diplomatic career in 1962 as a an administrative and budget officer with the World Health Organization, also in Geneva. He made his way through the UN, eventually becoming assistant secretary-general for Peacekeeping Operations in March 1993.