A special doodle has been created by on its homepages across Sub Sahara Africa to mark the 73rd birthday of
the late Nobel Laureate, Wangari Maathai.
In the doodle, a figure of a smiling Maathai replaces the second "o" in the Google logo.
It was created by the Google Doodle team to commemorate Maathai's achievements. She was the first female doctorate holder from East Africa. She also founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, which has planted 51 million trees and empowered African women by helping them develop new skills and educate themselves.
Maathai was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace.
She was recently honoured by the British Royal Family, and Prince Charles planted a tree in her memory at an environment conservation conference.
The prince said, "… 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 US' 4th of July celebrations 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.