THE UNBOWED Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai was the first woman in Central Africa to earn a PhD, the first Black woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the mother of the Ecofeminist movement — and that’s just the beginning! Discover the life of this remarkable, brilliant, world-changing woman with our guest, author and environmentalist Virginia Phiri.

The Green Belt Movement website is here.

You can watch Wangari Maathai’s Nobel Prize speech here.

A large sign reads "We are on hunger strike for the release of the political prisoners" in front of a large crowd of people standing under a canopy. — The hunger strike at Uhuru park, before the police attacked the protestors, leaving Maathai unconscious.

Wangari Maathai after being beaten by police during the hunger strike at Uhuru Park
public domain

President Barack Obama walks with Wangari Maathai, who wears a bright yellow dress and headscarf, in an outdoor location. — US President Barack Obama and Wangari Maathai in Nairobi in 2006
photo by Fredrick Onyango

Virginia Phiri is an author and activist in Zimbabwe. Phiri has written both fiction and non-fiction books in English, and in two of Zimbabwe’s local languages, chiShona and isiNdebele. She is founder of Zimbabwe Women Writers and Zimbabwean Academic and Non Fiction Authors Association. Having been raised in a family of political activists aligned to the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union, she was actively involved in the Zimbabwe’s liberation war at the age of seventeen, Phiri is an accountant by profession, as well as an African orchid expert, who has co-authored orchid articles in journals such as Die Orchidee since 1996. She was an IUCN Africa Committee member up to 2012 and is currently a member of IUCN Species Survival Commission.

THE UNBOWED Wangari Maathai

Music featured in this episode included:

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