College alum drowns in France

This article was published August 25, 2011 at 5:07 p.m.

Kojo Minta, a 2009 College graduate, drowned earlier this month in a river while vacationing in southwest France.

On Aug. 10, Minta, 24, “was swept away beyond a small dam and eventually disappeared from two friends who were trying to save him,” a local police spokesman said, according to the Daily Mail.

“It appears that he had lost his footing and was not a very strong swimmer,” the spokesman said. “The victim had been swept under the river by the time he was located. He had been in the water for around 20 minutes by this time. More than an hour was spent by a doctor trying to resuscitate him but to no avail.”

“My dad went to France and saw the river, and it is not clear to him how it could have taken 20-30 minutes to find Kojo because the river is not that big,” Anna Minta, Kojo’s sister, wrote in an email. “I’m not sure how we will ever know exactly what happened, except that he drowned.”

Minta, a student of Ghanaian origin, had recently completed his master’s degree in history at Cambridge University and was due to start his PhD there.

At Penn, he majored in European History, Classical Studies and Religious Studies. He was a two-time recipient of the Thouron Award, a graduate exchange program between Penn and British universities. He served as a reporter for The Daily Pennsylvanian, member of the parliamentary debate team and the Philomathean Society and editor-in-chief of both the Penn History Review and Polymatheia, the Classics department’s undergraduate journal.

Minta was also president and CEO of the Gold Coast Fund, Inc., a non-profit organization he created in 2006 to build village libraries in West Africa.

“When you take measure of Kojo’s accomplishments as a student, it is evident that he was a brilliant scholar,” said David Marcou, a 2009 College graduate and close friend of Minta. “What is most striking about Kojo’s extensive achievements is that he was a supremely humble person. He was never boastful or egotistical.”

“He was one of the most compassionate and intelligent people I’ve ever encountered in my life,” said 2009 College graduate Dorna Mohaghegh, a friend of Minta who met him on the debate team. “He was just like a bright light.”

Minta is survived by his parents, Moses and Victoria, and his siblings Anna and Kofi.

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