BREAKING: Professor Francis Nkrumah, son of Ghana’s first President Kwame Nkrumah has died

Professor Francis Nkrumah (89), the son of Ghana’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, is dead. Professor Nkrumah is said to have died on, Sunday, 30 June 2024.

He was Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s firstborn child. He had him with Madam Fanny Miller who hailed from Elmina in the Central Region.

Dr Kwame Nkrumah is said to have met Miss Miller while he was teaching at the middle school of the Catholic church in a town adjacent to Elmina called Amisano.

They nurtured a relationship and Miss Miller conceived Professor Nkrumah before Dr Kwame Nkrumah left Ghana to study at Lincoln University in the United Kingdom.

By the time Dr Kwame Nkrumah came back, the child (Professor Francis Nkrumah) who had progressed to attend St. Augustine’s College had performed creditable well at the O Levels.

In the meantime, Nkrumah had become the leader of government business by 1952 and was living with Francis at his Accra New Town Residence. He eventually got Francis Nkrumah a Cocobod scholarship to travel to Germany to study medicine.

The late Emeritus Professor Francis Nkrumah, who was the longest-serving director of Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), was commended for his role in poliomyelitis eradication initiatives in Africa and for the various roles he played as a founding member of the Pediatric Association of Ghana and the West African College of  Physicians.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) Africa Region, in October 2016, honoured Professor Francis Kwesi Nkrumah for his distinguished and diligent role in Poliomyelitis eradication initiatives in Africa.

Professor Nkrumah was given three awards for having served on the Africa Regional Certification Committee (ARCC), honoured by the NHO Ghana office, and also as one-time chairman of the Regional Task Force on Immunization (TFI).

The cause of death is not immediately known.

But Indian author and editor Vijay Prashad announced his demise in a post on X on Sunday, June 30, 2024.