An East African is Honored in South America for Love of Trees

Wangari Maathai: The East African Lover of Trees

Wangari Maathai: The East African Lover of Trees

For her love of  trees; for her love of the natural environment, an East African scholar has been honoured in South America. Four years after the death of Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Wangari Maathai of  Nyeri, Kenya, has been honoured with the opening of a park named after her in Lima, Peru.

The launch of the Wangari Maathai Park in Peru was attended by five Kenyan and other East African government representatives.

TZ Business News wishes to celebrate with other nature lovers,  Professor Wangari’s legacy in the world of environmental protection,  through this reproduction of  a photo-story about her, originally published by Nairobiwire.com.

The late Wangari’s passion for tree conservation was remarkable until she met her demise in 2011.  Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was the founder of the Green Belt Movement and the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

She authored four books: The Green Belt Movement; Unbowed: A Memoir; The Challenge for Africa; and Replenishing the Earth. As well as having been featured in a number of books, she and the Green Belt Movement were the subject of a documentary film, ‘Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Maathai (Marlboro Productions, 2008)’.

Attendants at Wangari Maathai  park opening in Lima, Peru

Attendants at Wangari Maathai park opening in Lima, Peru

Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, a rural area here in East Africa, in 1940. She obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas (1964), a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1966), and pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi, before obtaining a Ph.D. (1971) from the University of Nairobi, where she also taught veterinary anatomy.

The Green Belt Movement says she was first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. Professor Maathai became chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and an associate professor in 1976 and 1977 respectively. In both cases, she was the first woman to attain those positions in the region.