The Nobel Peace Prize has just gone to Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank, who pioneered the whole concept of microlending. Yunus founded Grameen in 1976 during a famine in Bangladesh. Today it has 6.6 million borrowers of whom 97% are women.
This award is a big breakthrough for the whole microfinace sector, and may attract extra support to similar schemes throughout the world – including the UK.
But some in the microfinance sector are sounding a note of caution. Grameen is very unusual in that it has succeeded in becoming big enough to make a significant impact. Most microfinance schemes are very much smaller, and have often run into trouble when trying to scale up.
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