The late former First Lady, Theresa Kufuor, will be honored with a state funeral, according to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
President Akufo-Addo indicated during a meeting with the late former first lady’s family that the state funeral will be place on November 16, 2023.
Nana Akufo-Addo stated that Theresa Kufour deserves the state’s full respect, therefore the decision.
Mrs Kufuor died on Sunday, October 1, 2023, at the age of 87, after a protracted illness.
Theresa Kufuor (born October 25, 1935) was the wife of John Agyekum Kufuor, the second President of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, and the former First Lady of Ghana. She was a retired midwife and nurse.
Mrs Kufuor began her schooling at the Catholic Convent, OLA, in Keta, Ghana’s Volta Region. She subsequently moved to London to study as a Registered General Nurse in the Southern Hospital Group of Nursing in Edinburgh, Scotland.
She became a State Certified Midwife with a Certificate in Premature Nursing after additional studies at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford and Paddington General Hospital in London.
After meeting at a Republic Day Anniversary Dance in London in 1961, Theresa married John Kufuor when he was 23 years old. In 1962, they married. She has five children and eight grandchildren. She is a practicing Roman Catholic.
Despite being Ghana’s first lady for eight years, from 2001 to 2009, she managed to have a low political presence.
In 2007, she advocated for policy changes in the Government’s White Paper on Educational Reforms in order to implement UNESCO’s Free compulsory universal basic education (FCUBE) program for kindergarten students.
She started the Mother and Child Community Development Foundation (MCCDF), a non-governmental organization that works to reduce mother-to-child transmission in Ghana and Canada.
