Tamale
About an hour by air from Accra, or a long day by road. The gateway to the north.
Ghana-Net.com · People of Ghana · Women of Ghana · Tamale · 1927–1997
In 1960 Ghana's Parliament had no women in it. That year a law reserved ten seats for women, and one of them went to a thirty-two-year-old headmistress from Tamale. Within a year Kwame Nkrumah made her a minister, the first woman in Ghana to hold the title, and she is often described as the first woman in Africa to hold a cabinet post. She was a northerner in a government run largely by southerners, a woman among men, and she found time to write children's books. Her name is on a commemorative stamp and on very little else.
Susanna Henkel was born in Tamale in November 1927 (sources give the 20th or the 27th), in what was then the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast. Her surname is an unusual one for the north; we have found no documented account of its origin.
In the colonial north, schools were few and girls' schools fewer. The British ran the Northern Territories as a labour reserve for the mines and farms of the south, and invested little in education there. That made it remarkable that a Tamale girl reached Achimota, the elite school near Accra, and qualified as a teacher. She later married and became Susanna Al-Hassan.
From 1955 to 1960 she was headmistress of the Girls' Middle School at Bolgatanga, in today's Upper East Region. For girls of the far north, a middle school was often the end of the road; she spent five years trying to make it the start of one.
The north in those years: the same decade saw southern campaigners like Hannah Kudjoe travelling north with clothing and lessons. Al-Hassan was different: she was a northerner working in the north.
When Ghana became a republic in 1960, not one woman sat in its Parliament. Mabel Dove Danquah had won a seat in 1954, but she was gone by 1956. Nkrumah's government passed the Representation of the People (Women Members) Act, creating ten special seats to be filled by women, one for each region.
On 27 June 1960 the ten CPP women were returned unopposed. Susanna Al-Hassan took the seat for the Northern Region. She sat in the Parliament of Ghana until the coup of 1966.
Real reform, or a gift from the party? The Act put ten women into Parliament at a stroke, far ahead of most countries at the time. But the women were chosen by the CPP and elected unopposed, in a state moving towards one-party rule. It was both a breakthrough for women and a sign of how much power the party held.
In 1961 Nkrumah appointed her Deputy Minister of Education, the first woman in Ghana to be appointed a minister. In 1963 she became Minister of Social Affairs, and in 1965, when Nkrumah merged ministries, Minister of Social Welfare and Community Development. She is widely described as the first woman in Africa to hold a cabinet portfolio.
The end: the coup of 24 February 1966 dissolved Parliament and removed every minister. See General Ankrah and the coup.
Al-Hassan was also one of Ghana's early writers for children, at a time when most schoolbooks were about English children in English villages. Her books put Ghanaian, and especially northern, children at the centre.
After the coup she returned to public life only occasionally; some sources list her in government roles again later, including in the 1980s, but the record is thin and inconsistent. Her daughter Selma became a well-known newscaster in the 1980s.
Susanna Al-Hassan died on 17 January 1997, aged 69. In 2007, for the fiftieth anniversary of independence, Ghana put her on a commemorative stamp. There is no major monument to her, in Tamale or in Accra.
About an hour by air from Accra, or a long day by road. The gateway to the north.
Seat of the Dagbon kingdom, about 90 km east.
The river that became a lake, from her 1979 book.
Susanna Al-Hassan owed her seat to a law and her ministry to Nkrumah, and she served a government that was becoming a one-party state. That is true, and it does not diminish what she did. A girl from the most neglected part of the colony became a teacher, a headmistress, a member of Parliament and a minister, and she wrote books so that northern children could read about themselves. Ghana has had few women ministers since, and fewer from the north. The first one deserves to be better known than a stamp.
Verified: 29 September 2026. Her birth in Tamale in November 1927 (20th or 27th), education at Achimota, headship at Bolgatanga from 1955 to 1960, her election unopposed under the Women Members Act on 27 June 1960, her posts as Deputy Minister of Education (1961–63) and Minister of Social Affairs (from 1963), her books, her death on 17 January 1997 and the 2007 stamp follow GhanaWeb, the Edward A. Ulzen Memorial Foundation and published biographies. Later government roles are reported inconsistently and are presented as uncertain. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.