Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan environmentalist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She founded the Green Belt Movement, which empowered women to plant millions of trees, restoring degraded land and fighting deforestation.
Born in Nyeri, Kenya, she was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a PhD. Her activism connected environmental protection with women’s rights, democracy, and sustainable development.
Maathai’s legacy lives on through the forests she helped regrow and the lives she inspired across Africa and beyond.