FACTBOX: Ghana's "gentle giant" Kufuor hands over power

(Reuters) - Ghana's President John Kufuor handed over power on Wednesday to opposition leader John Atta Mills, who narrowly won a presidential election run-off last week.

Here are some key facts on Kufuor.

-- Kufuor, at 6 foot 3 inches tall, is known as the "gentle giant."

-- His victory in the 2000 presidential election over outgoing President Jerry Rawlings' vice-president, John Atta Mills, was the former British colony's first peaceful transfer of power from one elected government to another.

-- Kufuor, born in December 1938, is a Christian from the once dominant Ashanti tribe in the country's gold- and cocoa-producing economic heartland.

-- Before entering politics, Kufuor obtained a law degree at Britain's Oxford University and started work as a private lawyer in 1965 in Kumasi, the main town of the Ashanti region. He was city manager and chief legal officer of Kumasi City Council from 1967 to 1969.

-- Kufuor served as a junior foreign minister in a 1969-1972 civilian government sandwiched between two periods of military rule, and was a member of Constituent Assemblies that wrote new constitutions in 1969 and 1979. He joined a 1982 Rawlings administration, with a local government brief, but resigned after seven months over political differences.

-- He chaired the Ashanti Brick and Construction Company between 1973 and 1978 and was chairman of one of Africa's best known soccer clubs, Asante Kotoko, from 1988 to 1991.

-- Kufuor made his political comeback several years after Rawlings introduced multiparty democracy in the early 1990s, but lost the presidential election to Rawlings in 1996. But he won the next two presidential elections in 2000 and 2004.

-- Toward the end of 2006, Kufuor accused Rawlings of plotting to overthrow his administration by trying to stage a repeat of his military coup in 1981.

-- Kufuor served twice as chairman of West African regional bloc ECOWAS, in 2001 and 2003. He was chairman of the African Union for a year from January 2007. During Kufuor's administration, Ghana presided over the U.N. Security Council in August 2006.