It was reported today that Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental and women’s rights activist, has just won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. She is the first African woman in history to win this prestigious award.

Maathai, 64, founded the Green Belt movement in 1977, which organized poor women in rural Kenya to battle deforestization by planting millions of trees and renew the source of fuel for cooking fires in villages. She was also beaten and jailed when she opposed state policies that endangered wildlife, forests and parks during the rule of Kenyan President Daniel Marap Moi. The Nobel committee stated, "Maathai stood up courageously against the former oppressive regime in Kenya...Her unique forms of action have contributed to drawing attention to political oppression.”

She has also traveled the world to support women’s right movements. For one, she attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, joining her friend and activist, the late Bella Abzug, as well as a thousand other women in a march regarding the global problem of violence against women.

Maathai has received degrees in science from Mount. St. Scholastica College in Kansas, The University of Pittsburgh and the University of Nairobi, where she was awarded a doctorate before directing the veterinary medicine faculty there.

Not only is this a historical day for African women, but this winner, this woman, has done quite an amazing job so far! And I don’t doubt she will continue to accomplish exceptional feats and inspire millions of people. At the conference in Beijing she told a reporter, “No matter how much we fail, we must recognize that there is hope. Especially in my region, with all the recent slaughter in Rwanda, for even there, the sun will rise, and we continue to hope that we can overcome our suffering." And Maathai is certainly one who will help that sun peek out over the horizon.