Wangari Muta Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, died at age 71 from cancer on Sunday in a Nairobi hospital. Insubordinate, combative, the Kenyan environmental activist has dedicated her life to safeguarding Africa's forests and democratizing her country.
“In my ethnic group, the revolt is natural. I am basically a typical Kikuyu ”, she declared to the“ World ”in 2001, as if to justify the tenacity of the fights of the association Green Belt Movement (green belt in French) that she created in 1977. to fight against deforestation.
Born in 1940 in a family of poor peasants of the Kikuyu ethnic group, in the Nyeri region, 150 kilometers north of Nairobi, the young Wangari, of rare intelligence, was very quickly spotted by her teachers, Catholic sisters. . With their help, she gets a scholarship to the United States. She left for Kansas in the late 1950s to study biology..
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