The problem
Deforestation was drying streams, eroding soil and lengthening the walk for firewood and water — and reforestation programmes run from ministries kept failing.
The innovation
Pay rural women a small sum per seedling that survives, and let them run the nurseries. Restoration becomes household income and a claim on the land.
How it worked
Community groups raised indigenous seedlings, planted them on farms and public land, and were paid on survival at follow-up rather than on planting.
Why it mattered
Tens of millions of trees through the movement's networks, and a template copied across and beyond the continent.
The legacy
It reframed environmental restoration as an economic and rights question rather than a purely technical one — the reasoning cited in the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
Sources
Nobel Peace Prize 2004 award record and presentation speech
Institutional recordGreen Belt Movement programme records
Institutional record
Follow the invention
The West Area computers become programmers
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The precision wire resistor
A wire-wound resistance element designed so its value held under thermal and mechanical stress, and could be manufactured cheaply and consistently.
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