The Ghanaian business community is reflecting on the transformative economic legacy of former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, who passed away in Accra on Thursday, October 23, 2025, at the age of 76. Serving as the nation’s longest-serving First Lady (1982-2000), Koandu Agyemang Rawlings revolutionized how the country approached grassroots economic mobilization and redefined the female role in Ghana’s economic structure, earning her the moniker “Iron Lady.”
Her most enduring economic tool was the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM). Formed during the economically turbulent 1980s, a period marked by drastic commodity decline, high inflation, and sustained unemployment, the DWM emerged as a powerful, non-governmental financial and training vehicle designed to bypass traditional financial institutions and empower women at the base of the pyramid.
The DWM: Ghana’s First Grassroots SME Financing Engine
Under Nana Konadu’s decisive leadership, the DWM focused its energy on creating a self-sufficient female workforce. While its leadership was sometimes criticized for being composed of elites, its core mandate was directing resources toward small market women’s groups, women farmers’ groups, and rural communities.
The philosophy was clear: encourage women to organise, find profitable economic activities, and become self-sufficient income earners rather than assisted persons. The DWM was instrumental in providing micro-loans and essential support for the creation of cottage industries across the country, spanning vegetable cultivation, cloth weaving, batik making, gari processing, and raw material production to feed local factories.
These self-financing ventures created job opportunities and stable incomes for members, effectively plugging gaps in rural and peri-urban employment among women.
The global impact of this effort was tangible. A December 13, 1999, issue of Forbes magazine highlighted the financial returns, noting that the movement’s export farm projects boosted the country’s non-traditional export earnings.
“Apart from generating income to support the Movement’s activities in rural areas, the project is also serving as a source of employment for women within the locality. Because the project is under careful management and good agronomics care, it is serving as a practical training and demonstration farm for students in the Junior and Senior Secondary Schools as well as for the country’s Universities,” the publication said.
Between January and June 1994 alone, the project accounted for over 22.5 tonnes of fresh vegetables exported to Europe, demonstrating the DWM’s capacity to build successful, market-ready supply chains from the ground up.
Investing in Human Capital and Legal Certainty
Beyond direct financing, the DWM initiated critical infrastructural and legal reforms that drastically improved women’s participation in the formal economy.
The establishment of over 821 day care centres and schools across Ghana was a strategic investment in human capital development. These centers relieved working women of the “tedious tentacles of carework,” enabling them to undertake full-time economic activity, thus increasing family income and regional GDP.
The opening and closing hours of these day care centres aligned with the working hours of the women, with some starting as early as 6.00am and closing as late as 6.00pm, completely different from the regular school hours.
Furthermore, the DWM was instrumental in the passage of the Intestate Succession Law during the PNDC regime. This law ensured Ghanaian women were better protected regarding inheritance, granting them essential control over personal assets and resources, which in turn enhanced their creditworthiness and ability to sustain their businesses over the long term.
A Legacy of Empowerment Validated
Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings’s primary focus remained on economic upliftment. In a 2020 interview with Asaase Radio in Accra, she clarified that the label of “feminist” was secondary to her mission:
“I used to say that I am not a feminist. I just believe in a woman being empowered, strength of a woman and all that. Something about four years or five years ago, somebody said, you are a feminist. I said, I’m not, she said, yes you are. Then she explained to me what a feminist is and I said, Then I am a feminist. But until then, it was more of what can we do to make women take their rightful place in this country. And be so self-sufficient and self-reliant that their children will not suffer, they themselves will not suffer, they’ll have an income,” she said.
This commitment to self-sufficiency is her defining economic impact. Actor and media personality George Quaye captured this effect in a Facebook post earlier this year:
“I was young. But I remember Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings and the 31st December Women’s Movement! That game changer of a movement that empowered millions of women across Ghana, helping them start businesses, get education, and stand up for their rights… The movement was full of energy and truly made a difference in communities… setting up schools, teaching women to read and write, and pushing for laws that protect women’s inheritance rights, among others! I honestly wish the movement was still as vibrant today, inspiring and lifting up our young women like it did back then.”
Another media personality, Sports Journalist Fentuo Tahiru Fentuo credited the DWM for enabling his early education:
“Those 31st December Women’s Movement Day Cares were crucial interventions, same as a programme such as Free SHS. They may not be perfect, but you cannot deny that they give kids like myself a chance at getting an education and influencing a whole community. So, to Mrs. Rawlings, thank you again,” he wrote in an X post.
In 2014, Konadu Agyemang Rawlings changed the movement’s name to the Development Women’s Movement (DWM), necessitated by decoupling the organisation from the politics as it concentrates more on empowering women for greater mobilisation and improvement in their lives.
Today, we do not know the actual membership of the 31st December Women’s movement, and it may not be as vibrant as it was in the 90s. One publication in 1999 placed the group’s membership at 2.1 million. And while much cannot be said about the group today, it served a purpose during its time in the 90s, so much so that, even before Nana Konadu’s passing, she had been eulogized for all the work she did.
Nana Konadu’s legacy is woven into Ghana’s economic fabric. From the rural entrepreneurs who found capital through the DWM to the young women now entering politics and business, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings showed how organized female economic power could serve as a powerful engine for national development.
