Kofi Annan appointed chancellor of Ghana university.

Former secretary general of the United Nations Kofi Annan has been appointed chancellor of the University of Ghana in Accra. Annan, a Ghanaian, will be sworn in by president John Agyekum Kufuor at a special ceremony on 11 August. He succeeds the late Nana Wereko Ampem II, former Omanehene (paramount chief) of Amanokrom and Gyasehene (personal assistant to the chief) of Akuapim Traditional Area, who died in 2005.

Born in 1938 in the southern central city of Kumasi, Annan studied in Ghana, the United States and Switzerland before joining the World Health Organisation in the early 1960s. He held various posts within the UN system during the course of his career, including as head of peacekeeping operations during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the Srebrencia genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina the following year. He served as the UN secretary general from 1997 to 2007, winning the Nobel prize for peace in 2001. In February 2008 he helped negotiate a political solution to the post-election crisis in Kenya.