Prize died in a Nairobi hospital yesterday while
undergoing treatment for cancer. She was aged
71.
Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, which enabled poor women to plant
20-30 million trees in Africa.
She is the first African to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
Ms Maathai won the prize in 2004 for promoting
conservation, women's rights and transparent
government - the first African woman to get the
award.
She was elected as an MP in 2002 and served as
a minister in the Kenyan government for a time.
Mrs Maathai was also the first woman in East
Africa to complete a doctorate, in 1971 at the
University of Nairobi, where she later became an
associate professor in the veterinary anatomy
department. She became a professor of
veterinary anatomy, rose to international fame for campaigns against government-backed forest clearances in Kenya in the late 1980s-90s.
Under the former government of President Daniel Arap Moi, she was arrested several times, and vilified.
In 2008, Ms Maathai was tear-gassed during a
protest against the Kenyan president's plan to
increase the number of ministers in the cabinet.
In her speech accepting the Nobel prize, Ms
Maathai said she hoped her own success would
spur other women on to a more active role in the
community. She also said that she had been
inspired by her childhood experiences in rural
Kenya, where she saw forests being cleared and
replaced by commercial plantations, which
destroyed biodiversity and the ability of forests to conserve water.
"I hope it will encourage them to raise their voices and take more space for leadership," she said.
The President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, said she was saddened by the news.
"Africa, particularly African women, have lost a
champion, a leader, an activist. We're going to
miss her. We're going to miss the work she's been doing all these years on the environment, working for women's rights and women's participation," she said.
The mother of three, who also has degrees from
Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas and the
University of Pittsburgh, had been in and out of
hospital since the start of the year, said former
colleague Edward Wageni.
Mr Wageni is deputy executive director at the
Green Belt Movement, which Mrs Maathai founded in 1977.
The organisation's website said her death was a
great loss to the many who 'admired her
determination to make the world a more peaceful, healthier and better place.'
It said that her funeral arrangements would be
announced soon.
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