Prof. Ama Atta Aidoo passes on aged 81
Former Education Minister and renowned author of ‘The Dilemma of a Ghost’ has passed on.
According to her family, the poet, playwright and academic born on March 23, 1942, died peacefully at home.
In a press statement, the family announced, “with deep sorrow but in the hope of the resurrection, informs the general public that our beloved relative and writer passed away in the early hours of this morning Wednesday, May 31, 2023, after a short illness.”
“Funeral arrangements would be announced in due course,” it added.
The family requests of the general public privacy in its difficult moments of grief.
Who is Prof Ama Atta Aidoo?
With a career spanning more than five decades, she has received international recognition as one of the most prominent African writers of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making Aidoo the first published African woman dramatist.
As a novelist, she won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Changes (1991). She was the Minister of Education in the Jerry Rawlings administration.
In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation to promote and support the work of African women writers.
She has also lived and taught in the United States, Europe and Zimbabwe.
Source: Ghana News
