Witness

In 2004, the Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, a grass-roots organisation empowering local women to plant trees. It spread to other African countries and contributed to the planting of over 30 million trees. In 2016, Alex Last spoke to her daughter, Wanjira.Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scient