Kofi Annan met Nane Lagergren in Geneva in 1981, when both worked for the United Nations. Twenty years later she stood beside him in Oslo as he and the UN shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
Geneva, 1981
Nane Lagergren, a Swedish lawyer, was a legal officer at the UN refugee agency. Kofi Annan, from Kumasi in Ghana, was a mid-level UN official. Both had been married before and both had children. Nane is a niece of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Budapest during the Second World War.
New York, 1984
They married in New York in 1984 and raised a blended family of three children: Kofi’s son and daughter from his first marriage and Nane’s daughter. Nane later worked as an artist. In January 1997 Kofi became the first UN Secretary-General from sub-Saharan Africa.
Oslo and after
In 2001 Annan and the UN shared the Nobel Peace Prize, and Nane joined him in Oslo for the ceremony. After his second term ended in 2006 they lived in Switzerland, and he led the Kofi Annan Foundation. Their marriage lasted until his death in Bern in August 2018, after 34 years. He was buried in Accra.
