The blood of the struggle
For those who died fighting for independence.
Ghana-Net.com · People of Ghana · Women of Ghana · 1922–2015
In the months before independence the government advertised for designs for a national flag. A young art teacher, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, saw the notice and, as she said later, as an artist she could not simply ignore it. Her red, gold and green tricolour with a black star was raised on 6 March 1957 and became one of the most copied flags in Africa. She then spent twenty years rescuing Ghanaian hockey. For decades almost nobody knew her name, and her own children's friends did not know their mother had designed the flag. This is the story of Theodosia Okoh.
Theodosia Salome Abena Kumea Asihene was born on 13 June 1922, most sources say at Wenchi, in today's Bono Region, the fourth of eight children. Her parents came from Anum, a Guan town in the east. Her father, the Reverend Emmanuel Victor Asihene, later became Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, remembered as its first African Moderator. The family moved with his postings, and she began school at Effiduase in Ashanti.
She was educated in the schools of the Basel Mission tradition, at the middle, senior and teacher-training schools at Agogo, and then at Achimota. She became an art teacher and a working artist, in watercolour, oil and collages of feathers and corn stalk. She married Enoch Kwabena Okoh, who rose to be Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service under Nkrumah, until the coup of 1966.
As independence approached, the new country needed symbols of its own, and the government invited designs for a national flag. Theodosia Okoh sent one in. Her design was chosen, and on the night of 6 March 1957 it was raised at the Old Polo Ground in Accra as the Union Jack came down.
No fanfare: she received no public credit for years. She was a teacher and a civil servant's wife, the flag was the nation's, and nobody thought to put the designer's name on it. Her family later said she never made a fuss about it.
For those who died fighting for independence.
The gold of the old Gold Coast.
Ghana's forests, cocoa and land.
Echoing Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line.
A flag for a continent: red, gold and green had been Ethiopia's colours, the flag of the one African state never colonised. Ghana, the first sub-Saharan colony to become independent, took them up, and Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon and others followed. Theodosia Okoh's design helped make these the colours of African independence. The full story of the symbols is on Ghana's national symbols.
After the one-party referendum of January 1964, Nkrumah's government changed the flag: the gold stripe became white, the colours of the ruling Convention People's Party. For two years Ghana flew a red, white and green flag with a black star, a party flag as the national flag. After the coup of 1966 the soldiers restored Theodosia Okoh's original design, which has flown ever since.
Her second great cause was sport. She became the first woman to chair the Ghana Hockey Association and later President of the Ghana Hockey Federation, leading the sport for more than twenty years. She pushed for a national hockey pitch in Accra, completed in the early 1970s, persuaded football clubs to start hockey teams, and saw Ghana reach international tournaments.
The nickname: the sports administrator Ohene Djan called her the "Joan of Arc of Ghana hockey", the woman who stepped in to save the game when the men around it hesitated.
Theodosia Okoh died on 19 April 2015 at Tema, aged 92. Flags across Ghana, her flag, flew at half-mast for three days. On 28 May 2015 she was given a state funeral in the forecourt of State House in Accra.
Beside the Accra Sports Stadium. Check the Ghana Hockey Association for matches.
Her colours and star on the Black Star Gate.
The Old Polo Ground, where her flag was first raised.
North-west of Sunyani, the town most sources give as her birthplace.
Theodosia Okoh gave Ghana its most visible symbol and asked for nothing for it. It took the country almost forty years to honour her properly, and even then a city mayor moved to take her name off the stadium she had fought for. Her story is typical of how Ghana has treated many of the women who built it: their work used every day, their names left out. Her flag has flown for almost seventy years, through coups, a party that tried to change it, and every Republic since. That is the recognition that lasted.
Verified: 29 September 2026. Her birth on 13 June 1922, her parents, schooling at Agogo and Achimota, her husband's office, the adoption of the flag in 1957, the white-striped CPP flag of 1964–66, her leadership of Ghana hockey, the naming of the stadium in 2004, the renaming controversy of 2013, her death on 19 April 2015 and her state funeral on 28 May 2015 follow Ghanaian press, GhanaWeb and published biographies. Her birthplace is given as Wenchi, as in most sources; one gives Effiduase, where she began school. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.