Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/04/21/Wangari_Maathai_The_Challenge_for_Africa Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai argues that well-intentioned aid to Africa may have unexpected negative consequences. She draws from Sharon Stone's pledge to buy anti-malaria bed nets in Tanzania to explain why money alone will not solve Africa's problems. ----- Wangari Muta Maathai is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which, through networks of rural women, has planted over 30 million trees across Kenya since 1977. In 2002, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament in the first free elections in a generation, and in 2003 was appointed Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2004, she is the author of Unbowed: A Memoir, and speaks to organizations around the world. Her newest book, The Challenge for Africa addresses the intricacies of African issues, such as the lack of technological developments, the absence of fair international trade, population pressures and enduring hunger, and the dearth of genuine political and economic leadership. Maathai stresses the need for Africans to invent and implement their own solutions, rather than relying on foreign aid and Western visions of change, and calls for a revolution in leadership on both a political and individual level. Wangari Maathai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, is the founder of the Green Belt Movement in her home country of Kenya, an environmental group that has restored indigenous forests and assisted rural women by paying them to plant trees in their communities. Since 1977, it has planted more than 30 million trees in Kenya and has been replicated in dozens of other African countries. Having helped transform Kenya from a vicious dictatorship to a fledgling progressive democracy, Maathai is currently Kenya's Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources and a member of Parliament.

[ Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:56:40 -0700 ]

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