Wangari Maathai

Wangari Muta Maathai was born on 1 April 1940 in Nyeri, in the central highlands of Kenya, into a farming family of the Kikuyu community. She showed academic promise early and, through a US-sponsored scholarship programme known as the 'Kennedy Airlift,' travelled to the United States in 1960 to study biology at Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas, later earning a master's degree at the University of Pittsburgh.

She returned to Kenya and in 1971 became the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate, completing her PhD in veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi, where she also became the university's first female professor and department chair. Her scientific training gave her a close, technical understanding of the environmental degradation she saw unfolding around her — deforestation, soil erosion, and the loss of the land's ability to support rural communities.

In 1977, working through the National Council of Women of Kenya, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, initially a simple idea: pay rural women a small stipend to plant trees, addressing deforestation, providing firewood and building materials, and giving women an independent source of income. The programme grew far beyond its origins, eventually planting more than 50 million trees across Kenya and training tens of thousands of women in forestry, beekeeping and food processing.

Maathai's environmental work increasingly put her at odds with Kenya's authoritarian government under President Daniel arap Moi. She led high-profile campaigns against government plans to build skyscrapers and private developments on public parkland and forest reserves, actions that led to her being beaten, arrested and jailed on multiple occasions. She was undeterred, framing environmental protection explicitly as inseparable from democratic accountability and human rights.

In 2002, following Kenya's democratic transition, Maathai was elected to Parliament with an overwhelming majority and was appointed Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources. In 2004 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — the first African woman and the first environmentalist to receive it — recognised by the Nobel Committee for her 'contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.'

She continued her advocacy internationally until her death from ovarian cancer in 2011, having founded the Green Belt Movement's international arm and mentored environmental and pro-democracy movements across Africa. Her memoir, Unbowed, and the concept she championed of the 'three-legged stool' — democratic space, sustainable resource management, and cultures of peace — remain influential frameworks in environmental and development thinking today.