Fathia Nkrumah (1932–2007; born Fathia Rizk; Arabic: فتحية رزق), was an Egyptian and the First Lady of the newly independent Ghana as the wife of the Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, its first president.
Fathia Nkrumah was born and brought up in Zeitoun, a district of Cairo to a Coptic family. She was the third daughter of a civil servant who died early and Fathia was raised by her mother single-handedly after her husband's death.
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After completing her secondary education, she worked as a teacher in her school, Notre Dame des Apôtres. As teaching did not appeal to her, she took a job in a bank. At that stage, Kwame Nkrumah proposed to marry her. Her mother was reluctant to see another of her children marry a foreigner and quit the country, as Fathia's brother had left Egypt with his English wife. Fathia explained that Nkrumah was an anti-colonial hero, like Nasser, yet her mother refused to speak to her or bless the marriage. Nkrumah married Fathia the evening of her arrival in Ghana: New Year's Eve, 1957-1958.[1]
Fathia Nkrumah was a very young wife and mother of three very young children when her husband was overthrown in Ghana's first successful military coup d'état on February 24, 1966.[2] She had to take her children to Cairo, Egypt to be raised there while her husband went to exile.
Fathia died on 31 May 2007 in Badrawy Hospital in Cairo due to a stroke after a period of illness.[3]
Her memorial mass was held in the Orthodox Cathedral Church in Cairo by Pope Shenouda III on Friday, June 1, 2007. Subsequently, Fathia Nkrumah's bodily remains were flown to Ghana for a funeral at the State House and, following her "lifelong request," she was buried next to her husband at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park.[4] Her daughter, Samia Nkrumah is the CPP Member of Parliament for the Jomoro Constituency in the Western Region of Ghana.