Kenya's Nobel Peace laureate Maathai dies
The first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, environmentalist Wangari Maathai, has died aged-71 in Nairobi after a long battle with cancer. Matthai became a key figure in Kenya after founding her Green Belt Movement in 1997 which campaigned for environmental conservation and good governance.
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Wangari Maathaï Interview
In recent years, Maathai founded green groups and launched several campaigns against climate change and for environmental protection. Her organization planted some 40 million trees across Africa.
Outside her native Kenya, she was involved in efforts to save central Africa’s Congo basin forest, the world’s second largest tropical forest.
Aside from her conservation work, Maathai was elected an MP in 2002 and then named the environment assistant minister, a position she held between 2003 and 2005.
For more than a decade her movement was also involved in the struggle against the dictatorial regime of Kenya’s former president Daniel Arap Moi.
She famously campaigned against the construction of a high-rise building at a park in central Nairobi, stopped the grabbing of a forest outside the city and successfully pressed for the release of 51 political prisoners.
She was also the first woman in east and central Africa to earn a doctorate.
“Professor Maathai’s departure is untimely and a very great loss to all those who knew her as a mother, relative, co-worker, colleague, role model and heroine or who admired her determination to make the world a more peaceful , healthier and better place” said a statement by her Green Belt Movement.
Born in Kenya's fertile highlands, north of the capital Nairobi, Maathai became the first African woman, the first Kenyan and the first environmentalist to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
- 1940: Born Nyeri, Kenya
- 1964: Degree in Biological Sciences, Mount Scholastica College, Kansas
- 1966: Master of Science degree, University of Pittsburgh
- 1971: Doctorate, University of Nairobi
- 1997: Founded the Green Belt Movement
- 2002: Elected to Kenya’s parliament
- 2004: Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
- 2006: Awarded Legion d’Honneur
- 2011: Died Nairobi, Kenya
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