WANGARI MAATHAI

189pp., paperback, Athens, 2020

A short biography of Wangarĩ Muta Maathai (1940-2011), a Kenyan social, environmental and political activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her leadership of the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organisation she founded that focuses on poverty reduction and environmental conservation through restoring Africa's forests. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, she became chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Nairobi in 1976 and an associate professor in 1977. She is the author of The Green Belt Movement, Unbowed: a memoir, The Challenge for Africa, and Replenishing the Earth.

Tabitha Kanogo is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900-50 and Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau.