Samia Nkrumah
*Samia Nkrumah was born on this date in 1960. She is a Black politician and administrator.
Samia Yaba Christina Nkrumah was born in Aburi in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The second child of Kwame Nkrumah, she was forced to leave Ghana with her mother and brothers on the day of the 1966 military coup that overthrew her father. The family resettled in Egypt by the Egyptian government. She returned with her family in 1975 at the invitation of the National Redemption Council government and attended Achimota School.
However, she left the country again when her mother decided to return to Egypt in the early 1980s. She proceeded to London, later completing her studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London in the United Kingdom, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arabic Studies degree in 1991. She also completed a master's degree there in 1993. Nkrumah started work as a bank clerk with the London branch of the Bank of India in 1984 and with Al-Ahram as a journalist in 1989.
She is one of the founders of Africa Must Unite, which aims to promote Kwame Nkrumah's vision and political culture. As part of this philosophy, in December 2008, Nkrumah contested the constituency seat in the Western Region of Ghana and beat the incumbent M.P. of the National Democratic Congress (N.D.C.). Being the only C.P.P. member of parliament, she aligned with the minority NPP in the House of the 5th Parliament of the 4th Republic of Ghana. She was elected the first woman chairperson of the Convention People's Party in 2011, the first woman to ever head a major political party in Ghana.
Her victory, along with three other female members of the party, is hailed as marking the renaissance of the ailing C.P.P. and an affirmation of the party's long-held tradition of promoting women's rights. She became the first woman to head a major political party in Ghana. She served in this role until 2015.
She has two brothers, Gamal Nkrumah and Sekou Nkrumah., and an older half-brother, Professor Francis Nkrumah, a retired pediatrician. She is married to Michele Melega, an Italian-Danish man. They have a son, Kwame Thomas Melega. Nkrumah is fluent in Arabic, Italian, Danish, and English. She has worked as a journalist and media consultant in the Egyptian media space. She is also an advocate against child marriage, women's empowerment, and women's affairs.
