Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai, the first
African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has died of cancer aged 71,
her family said today. “It is with great
sadness that the family of professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away
on 25 September, 2011 at the Nairobi hospital after a prolonged and bravely
borne struggle with cancer,” said a statement issued via the Green Belt
Movement she founded.
Maathai became a
key figure in Kenya since founding the movement in 1977, staunchly campaigning
for environmental conservation and good governance.
She won the 2004
Nobel Peace Prize for her re-forestation work in her native Kenya, the first
African woman, the first Kenyan and the first environmentalist to receive this
honour.
Her organisation
has planted some 40 million trees across Africa. The first woman in
east and central Africa to earn a doctorate, Maathai also headed the Kenya Red
Cross in the 1970s.
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 from the 1980s, her movement also joined the struggle against the
dictatorial regime of Kenya's former President Daniel Arap Moi, with Maathai
repeatedly teargassed and beaten by police.
During the time,
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.
The award-winning
Maathai in recent years founded green groups and launched several campaigns
against climate change and environmental protection. Outside Kenya,
Maathai was involved in efforts to save central Africa's Congo basin forest,
the world's second largest tropical forest.
Maathai, who was
divorced, leaves behind three children and a granddaughter. “Professor
Maathai's departure is untimely and a very great loss to all 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 the statement.
