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Remembering Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai in her words

Wangari Maathai passed away on September 25 at the age of 71, after a year-long battle with cancer. She was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the first person to win for environmental activism.

Maathai had been first in a lot of things. She was the first woman in central Africa to hold a PhD and the first woman head of a university department in Kenya. In later years, Maathai was elected to the Kenyan Parliament and served as a cabinet minister.

Maathai published a memoir, “Unbowed,” in 2007 where she recounts starting the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, which is responsible for planting more than 10 million trees to provide firewood and combat soil erosion — the project was carried out primarily by women.

In a 2007 interview with Steve Paulson on To the Best of Our Knowledge, Maathai shared insights from her memoir and talked about how she triumphed over discrimination and tribalism in her native land and became an environmental activist.