Nobel winner: 'I'm delighted'

2004-10-08 12:14

Oslo - Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai on Friday won the Nobel Peace Prize, the first African woman to be awarded the prestigious prize since it was first handed out in 1901.

Maathai, who has served as Kenyan Assistant Minister for the Environment since 2003, founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, the largest tree planting project in Africa, aimed at promoting biodiversity and at the same time creating jobs and giving women a stronger identity in society.

The Nobel Committee honoured her "contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace".

"I am very delighted and I thank God for everything," Maathai, joined in Nairobi said. "I will carry on with my campaign and I ask Kenyans to join me.

A coveted prize

"I wonder who could have forwarded my name to the Nobel committee, but God knows," she added.

Maathai said she had been informed earlier in the day by Norway's ambassador to Kenya that she had won the coveted prize.

Deforestation has been a major problem in Kenya, exposing millions of people to drought and poverty. Maathai's organisation has planted more than 30 million trees and its nurseries now employ tens of thousands of people.

Forests cover less than two percent of Kenya's land, far below the United Nations' recommended minimum of 10% which it says is required for a country to sustain life naturally with the availability of rain, underground water, soil fertility and clear air and prevention of soil erosion.

Biologist by training

Maathai, 64, is a biologist by training. She was the first woman in western Africa to receive her doctorate and become a professor. She is also an ardent human rights activist in Kenya.

She was elected to the Kenyan parliament on the Green Party ticket in December 2002 in the first free elections held in the country in decades.

In January 2003, she was named Assistant Minister for the Environment.

The Nobel Committee has for many years chosen to give the prize to people or organisations who have worked either to resolve conflicts by peaceful means or in defence of human rights.

But the committee said in 2001, on the centenary of the first Nobel prizes, that it planned to widen the scope of the award. Maathai is the first environmentalist to win the coveted prize.

- AFP