First African Woman to Win Nobel Peace Prize Dies

The social and environmental activist became a laureate in 2004 for drawing attention to political oppression.

The first female African winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai, died of cancer on Sunday. Maathai was also the first female professor at the University of Nairobi and the first woman in east and central Africa to obtain a PhD. The founder of the Green Belt Movement, she worked tirelessly as a social and environmental activist planting trees and taking on the causes of women in rural Kenya. She became a local here after she was arrested and beaten repeatedly for fighting corruption in Daniel arap Moi’s regime. The mother of three also worked as an assistant government minister and wrote several books. She was 71.