  In an attempt to express the essence of the Akan concept of persons, Kwasi Wiredu refers to former Zambian President Kaunda's praise of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as “truly a person.” The concept of person to which Kaunda referred has a particular significance within the African cultural context. As Kaunda explains, “personhood is not an automatic quality of the human individual; it is something to be achieved, the higher the achievement, the higher the credit” (Wiredu 1992, 104).  The view of personhood as a matter of degrees, as exemplified in Kaunda's remark, is also a defining characteristic of the Akan notion of personhood.