Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmental and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, a non-governmental environmental organization focused on tree planting, environmental conservation and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Early life and education

Maathai was born on 1 April 1940 in the village of Ihithe, Nyeri District, in the central highlands of the colony of Kenya. Her family was Kikuyu, the most populous ethnic group in Kenya, and had lived in the area for several generations. Around 1943, Maathai's family relocated to a White-owned farm in the Rift Valley, near Nakuru, where her father had found work. Late in 1947, she returned to Ihithe with her mother, as two of her brothers were attending primary school in the village, and there was no schooling available on the farm where her father worked. Her father remained at the farm. Shortly afterward, at the age of eight years, she joined her brothers at Ihithe Primary School.

AIDS conspiracy theory

Controversy arose when it was reported by Kenyan newspaper The Standard that Maathai had claimed HIV/AIDS was "deliberately created by Western scientists to decimate the African population." Maathai denied making the allegations, but The Standard has stood by its reports.