News l Deceased of the Africa's First Female Nobel Peace Prize Winner

Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist who made it her mission to teach her countrywomen to plant trees and became Africa's first female Nobel Peace Prize winner, has died on 25 September 2011 after a yearlong battle with cancer and she was 71 .

Born April 1, 1940, Maathai grew up in rural Kenya and received a scholarship to study at Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kan., where she majored in biology, graduating in 1964. She obtained her doctoral degree and first woman professor at the University of Nairobi. She founded the Green Belt Movement, a nongovernmental organization in her native Kenya.

Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on sustainable development, democracy and peace. She believed that environmental degradation and unbridled development were among the roots of poverty.When she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, Maathai said she drew her inspiration from her childhood in a rural Kenyan village in the central highlands.

She started the group in 1977, encouraging poor women to collect native tree seeds in the wild, cultivate them and set up tree nurseries for a livelihood, paying them a small sum for any trees they planted. One aim was to ensure that poor families had access to sustainable firewood for cooking and water for drinking.She soon realized it was useless to struggle for environmental improvements without having democratic, accountable government, and her movement embraced human rights and democratic issues.

Thanks to Wangari’s efforts, the Green Belt Movement has planted tens of millions of trees since 1976 and was successfully initiated in neighboring countries, including Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and others