Dr. Alex Quaison-Sackey was the UN’s first black African president of the General Assembly
• Dr. Alex Quaison-Sackey was an achiever
• He was the first black African President of the General Assembly of the UN
• He was a close friend of Kwame Nkrumah
Although he died in December 1992, history is still replete with the knowledge that Dr. Alex Quaison-Sackey was the first diplomat from a black African nation to serve as president of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
The Ghanaian diplomat who was born on August 9, 1924, to a family active in politics in the coastal town of Winneba in the Central region of Ghana, served during the first and third republics. As a young boy, Alex schooled at the Mfantsipim Senior High School and was politically active as an undergraduate at Achimota College, near Accra, from which he graduated in 1948.
According ghanaianmuseum.com, Dr. Alex Quaison-Sackey went on to earn a degree at Oxford University in 1952 and became a diplomatic troubleshooter for Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, from the moment of Ghana’s independence in 1957.
From there, he chalked a number of notable feats: The first secretary at the Ghana High Commission from 1957 to 1959 and served as the country’s representative at the United Nations from 1959 to 1965. He was also Ghana’s ambassador to Cuba from 1961 to 1965 and ambassador to Mexico from 1962 to 1964.
From 1964 to 1965, Dr. Alex Quaison-Sackey served as president of the United Nations General Assembly, becoming the first diplomat from a black African nation to hold that position. In 1965, he became the foreign minister of Ghana, serving in that position for only a few months, as he was dismissed when President Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in February 1966.
It is said that Dr. Alex Quaison-Sackey remained close to President Kwame Nkrumah and was with him on a peace mission in Vietnam in February 1966, following the overthrow of the Nkrumah government by the army.
After battling pulmonary embolism, Quaison-Sackey died at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra on December 28, 1992, at the age of 68.
He was survived by his wife, Elsie, and children Egya, Awo, Yaaba, Kweku Bondzie, and Nii.
