In the doodle, a figure of a smiling Wangari replaces the second "o" in the Google logo. It was created by the Google Doodle team, and is intended to commemorate Wangari Maathai's myriad of achievements.
She was the first female doctorate holder from East Africa, and founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, which has planted around 51 million trees and empowered African women by helping them develop new skills and educate themselves.
Wangari was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace. Wangari was recently honoured by the British Royal Family, and Prince Charles planted a tree in her memory at an environment conservation conference.
He remarked "… so very greatly indeed I admired her, and whose loss we continue to mourn regularly, and whose remarkable legacy we celebrate namely the Green Belt Movement which continues, thank God, to have a lasting impact on the planet."
The Wangari Maathai doodle shall run for 24 hours, from midnight on 31 March to midnight on 1 April. Google Doodles, which are customizations of the Google logo were started in 1999 by Google Webmaster Dennis Hwang.
He was an intern at the time when he was asked to design a logo for the 4th of July in 2000. Since then, the Doodle team has celebrated and marked worldwide events, anniversaries, and holidays with Doodles that are designed on, around and through the Google logo on the site’s home page.
Last month, Google honoured Miriam Makeba, South African singer and activist with a doodle. More than 200 doodles have appeared on the US site Google.com since and hundreds more have appeared on international domains. They are usually designed by either googlers or users.
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