When Kofi Annan married Nane Lagergren in 1984, he was a mid-level official at the United Nations in Geneva. Thirteen years later, she was the wife of the UN Secretary-General.
Nane Lagergren was a Swedish lawyer who worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, where she met Annan. She was a niece of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Budapest during the Second World War before disappearing into Soviet custody in 1945.
Two families
Both had been married before. Annan’s first marriage, to Titi Alakija, a Nigerian woman from a prominent family, produced two children, Ama and Kojo. Nane had a daughter, Nina, from her first marriage. The couple raised a blended family and remained close to all three children.
At the UN
Annan became Secretary-General in January 1997, the first from sub-Saharan Africa. Nane took up her own causes as the Secretary-General’s spouse, including the rights of women and children and HIV and AIDS. She also worked as an artist, painting and exhibiting her work.
In 2001, Kofi Annan and the United Nations were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Nane accompanied him to Oslo for the ceremony.
Life after the UN
After leaving office at the end of 2006, Annan led the Kofi Annan Foundation, worked on mediation in Kenya after the 2007 election violence and served as UN and Arab League envoy on Syria. The couple lived in Switzerland and spent time in Ghana.
Annan’s memoir, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace, published in 2012, describes his years at the UN and the crises he faced, from Rwanda and Bosnia to Iraq. The Kofi Annan Foundation, set up in Geneva in 2007, carried on his work on elections, peace and leadership, and it continued that work after his death. For many Ghanaians, the couple became a familiar pair at state events whenever Annan came home.
Farewell
Kofi Annan died in Bern, Switzerland, in August 2018. His body was flown to Accra, where he lay in state and received a state funeral before burial at the new Military Cemetery at Burma Camp. Nane attended with the family.
A cross-cultural marriage
Kofi and Nane Annan’s marriage joined Ghana and Sweden, two very different cultures, and it lasted 34 years.
For couples in mixed marriages today, the lesson from their story is simple and hard at once: keep learning about the other person’s world, long after the wedding day.
