Wangarĩ Maathai (; 1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on planting trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004, she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
As a beneficiary of the Kennedy Airlift, she studied in the United States, earning a bachelor's degree from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas, and a masters degree from the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh. She then became the first woman in East and Central Africa to become a Doctor of Philosophy, receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi in Nairobi, Kenya. In 1984, she received the Right Livelihood Award for "converting the Kenyan ecological debate into mass action for reforestation."
Wangari Maathai was an elected member of the parliament of Kenya, and served as the assistant minister for environment and natural resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and November 2005. She was an Honorary Councillor in the World Future Council. As an academic and the author of several books, Maathai was not only an activist but also an intellectual who made significant contributions to thinking about ecology, development and gender in addition to African cultures and religions. She died of complications from ovarian cancer on 25 September, 2011.
Early life and education Maathai was born on 1 April,1940 in the village of Ihithe, Nyeri District, in the central highlands of the colony of Kenya. Her family was Kikuyu, the most populous ethnic group in Kenya, and had lived in the area for several generations. Around 1943, Maathai's family moved to a white-owned farm in the Rift Valley near Nakuru, where her father had found work. Late in 1947, she went back to Ihithe with her mother, as two of her brothers were attending primary school in the village, and there was no schooling available on the farm where her father worked. Her father was still at the farm. Shortly afterward, she joined her brothers at Ihithe Primary School at the age of eight.
When she was eleven, Maathai moved to St. Cecilia's Intermediate Primary School, a boarding school at the Mathari Catholic Mission in Nyeri. She studied at St. Cecilia's for four years. During that time, she became fluent in English and converted to Catholicism. She was involved with the Legion of Mary, whose members attempt "to serve God by serving fellow human beings." Studying at St. Cecilia's, she was sheltered from the ongoing Mau Mau uprising, which forced her mother to move from their homestead to an emergency village in Ihithe. When Maathai finished her studies there in 1956, she was rated first in her class and was granted admission to the only Catholic high school for girls in Kenya, Loreto High School in Limuru.
As the end of East African colonialism approached, Kenyan politicians, such as Tom Mboya, were proposing ways to make education in Western nations available to promising students. John F. Kennedy, then a United States Senator, agreed to fund such a program through the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, initiating what became known as the Kennedy Airlift or Airlift Africa. Maathai became one of some 300 Kenyans selected to study in the United States in September 1960.
She received a scholarship to study at Mount St. Scholastica College (now Benedictine College), in Atchison, Kansas, where she majored in biology, with minors in chemistry and German. After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1964, she studied at the University of Pittsburgh for a masters degree in biology. Her graduate studies were funded by the Africa-America Institute, and while she was in Pittsburgh, she first experienced environmental restoration, when local environmentalists pushed to rid the city of air pollution. In January 1966, Maathai received her MSc degree in biological sciences,UNCCD profile of Wangari Maathai . Retrieved 10 April 2009 and was appointed to a position as research assistant to a professor of zoology at the University College of Nairobi in Nairobi.
Maathai dropped her forename, preferring to be known by her birth name, Wangarĩ Muta when she returned to Kenya. When she arrived at the university to start a job, she was informed that it had been given to someone else. She believed this was because of gender and tribal bias. After a two-month job search, Professor Reinhold Hofmann, from the University of Giessen offered her a job as a research assistant in the microanatomy section of the newly established Department of Veterinary Anatomy in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University College of Nairobi.
In April 1966, Maathai met Mwangi Mathai, another Kenyan who had studied in America, who would later become her husband. She also rented a small shop in the city and established a general store, at which her sisters worked. In 1967, at the urging of Professor Hofmann, she travelled to the University of Giessen in Germany in pursuit of a doctorate. She studied both at the University of Giessen and LMU Munich. In the spring of 1969, she returned to Nairobi to continue her studies at the University College of Nairobi as an assistant lecturer. In May, she and Mwangi Mathai married. Later in the same year, she became pregnant with her first child, and her husband campaigned for a seat in Parliament, narrowly losing. During the election, Tom Mboya, who had been instrumental in founding the program which sent her overseas, was assassinated. This led to President Kenyatta effectually ending multi-party democracy in Kenya. Shortly after, her first son, Waweru, was born. In 1971, she became the first Eastern African woman to receive a Ph.D., her doctorate in veterinary anatomy, from the University College of Nairobi, which became the University of Nairobi the following year. She completed her dissertation on the development and differentiation of gonads in bovines. Her daughter, Wanjira, was born in December 1971.
Activism and political life 1972–1977: Start of activism Maathai continued to teach at the University of Nairobi, becoming a senior lecturer in anatomy in 1975, chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy in 1976, and associate professor in 1977. She was the first woman in Nairobi appointed to any of these positions.Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize 2004 Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 24 February 2009 During this time, she campaigned for equal benefits for the women working on the staff of the university, going so far as trying to turn the academic staff association of the university into a union, to negotiate for benefits. The courts denied this bid, but many of her demands for equal benefits were later met. In addition to her work at the University of Nairobi, Maathai became involved in several civic organisations in the early 1970s. She was a member of the Nairobi branch of the Kenya Red Cross Society, becoming its director in 1973. She was a member of the Kenya Association of University Women. Following the establishment of the Environment Liaison Centre in 1974, Maathai was asked to be a member of the local board, eventually becoming board chair. The Environment Liaison Centre worked to promote the participation of non-governmental organisations in the work of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), whose headquarters was established in Nairobi following the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972. Maathai also joined the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK). Through her work at these various volunteer associations, it became evident to Maathai that the root of most of Kenya's problems was environmental degradation.
In 1974, Maathai's family expanded to include her third child, son Muta. Her husband campaigned again for a seat in Parliament, hoping to represent the Lang'ata constituency, and won. During his campaign, he had promised to find jobs to limit the rising unemployment in Kenya. These promises led Maathai to connect her ideas of environmental restoration to providing jobs for the unemployed and led to the founding of Envirocare Ltd., a business that involved the planting of trees to conserve the environment, involving ordinary people in the process. This led to the planting of her first tree nursery, collocated with a government tree nursery in Karura Forest. Envirocare ran into multiple problems, primarily dealing with funding, and ultimately failed. However, through conversations concerning Envirocare and her work at the Environment Liaison Centre, UNEP made it possible to send Maathai to the first UN conference on human settlements, known as Habitat I, in June 1976.
In 1977, Maathai spoke to the NCWK concerning her attendance at Habitat I. She proposed further tree planting, which the council supported. On 5 June 1977, marking World Environment Day, the NCWK marched in a procession from Kenyatta International Conference Centre in downtown Nairobi to Kamukunji Park on the outskirts of the city, where they planted seven trees in honour of historical community leaders. This was the first event of the Green Belt Movement. Maathai encouraged the women of Kenya to plant tree nurseries throughout the country, searching nearby forests for seeds to grow trees native to the area. She agreed to pay the women a small stipend for each seedling which was later planted elsewhere.
In her 2010 book, Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World, she discussed the impact of the Green Belt Movement, explaining that the group's civic and environmental seminars stressed "the importance of communities taking responsibility for their actions and mobilizing to address their local needs," and adding, "We all need to work hard to make a difference in our neighborhoods, regions, and countries, and in the world as a whole. That means making sure we work hard, collaborate, and make ourselves better agents to change."Snyder, Laurie. "God Is Green as Well as Good: How Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai Changed the World One Tree at a Time ." The Contemplative Traveler, 9 October 2016 In this book, she explicitly engages with religious traditions, including the indigenous Kikuyu religion and Christianity, mobilizing them as resources for environmental thinking and activism.
1977–1979: Personal life challenges Maathai and her husband, Mwangi Mathai, separated in 1977. After a lengthy separation, Mwangi filed for divorce in 1979. He was said to have believed that Wangari was "too strong-minded for a woman" and that he was "unable to control her". In addition to naming her as "cruel" in court filings, he publicly accused her of adultery with another Member of Parliament,Perlez, Jane, "Nairobi Journal; Skyscraper's Enemy Draws a Daily Dose of Scorn" , The New York Times, 6 December 1989. Retrieved 16 April 2009 which in turn was thought to cause his high blood pressure and the judge ruled in Mwangi's favour. Shortly after the trial, in an interview with Viva magazine, Maathai referred to the judge as either incompetent or corrupt. The interview later led the judge to charge Maathai with contempt of court. She was found guilty and sentenced to six months in jail. After three days in Lang'ata Women's Prison in Nairobi, her lawyer formulated a statement that the court found sufficient for her release. Shortly after the divorce, her former husband sent a letter via his lawyer demanding that Maathai drop his surname. She chose to add an extra "a" instead of changing her name."Conservation and Feminism: Africa's Greenheart." The Economist, 21 September 2006