Wangari Muta Maathai is one of Africa’s most celebrated female activists. Originally trained as a scientist in Kenya and abroad, Professor Maathai returned to her home country of Kenya with a renewed political consciousness. There, she began her long career as an activist, campaigning for environmental and social justice while speaking out against government corruption. In 2004, Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership of the Green Belt Movement, a conservation effort that resulted in the restoration of African forests decimated during the colonial era.
In this biography, Tabitha Kanogo follows Wangari Maathai from her modest, rural Kenyan upbringing to her rise as a national figure campaigning for environmental and ecological conservation, sustainable development, democracy, human rights, gender equality, and the eradication of poverty until her death in 2011.
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, both available from Ohio University Press. More info →
Retail price:
$16.95 ·
Save 20% ($13.56)
US and Canada only
Availability and price vary according to vendor.
Share 
To request instructor exam/desk copies, email Jeff Kallet at kallet@ohio.edu.
To request media review copies, email Laura Andre at andrel@ohio.edu.
Permission to reprint
Permission
to photocopy or include in a course pack
via Copyright Clearance
Center
Paperback
978-0-8214-2417-9
Retail price: $16.95,
S.
Release date: April 2020
190 pages
·
4¼ × 7 in.
Rights: World
Electronic
978-0-8214-4071-1
Release date: April 2020
190 pages
Rights: World
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
By Pamela Scully
In this concise biography, Scully shows us how the life of Nobel Peace Prize winner and two-time Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf speaks to many of the key themes of the twenty-first century. Among these are the growing power of women in the arenas of international politics and human rights; the ravaging civil wars of the post–Cold War era in which sexual violence is used as a weapon; and the challenges of transitional justice in building postconflict societies.
Biography, Heads of State · Biography & Autobiography | Women · African Studies · Africa · Liberia · Western Africa
Ken Saro-Wiwa
By Roy Doron and Toyin Falola
A penetrating, accessible portrait of the activist whose execution galvanized the world. Hanged by the Nigerian government on November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa became a martyr for the Ogoni people and for human rights activists, as well as a symbol of modern Africans’ struggle against military dictatorship, corporate power, and environmental exploitation.
Biography, Activists · Environmental Studies · African History · African Studies · Nigeria · Western Africa · Africa
Amílcar Cabral
A Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary
By Peter Karibe Mendy
Amílcar Cabral’s charismatic and visionary leadership, his pan-Africanist solidarity and internationalist commitment to “every just cause in the world,” remain relevant to contemporary struggles for emancipation and self-determination. This concise biography is an ideal introduction to his life and legacy.
Biography, Activists · Guinea-Bissau · History | Africa | West · African Studies · Colonialism and Decolonization · Western Africa
Radical Utu
Critical Ideas and Ideals of Wangari Muta Maathai
By Besi Brillian Muhonja
In Radical Utu: Critical Ideas and Ideals of Wangari Muta Maathai, Wangari Maathai is presented as a scholar whose contributions to gender equality, democratic spaces, economic equity and global governance, and indigenous African languages and knowledges paralleled her renowned environmental activism.
Political Philosophy · Kenya · African Studies · Women’s Studies
