CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh – Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh’s “Banker to the Poor” who provides loans to help millions of people fight poverty by starting businesses, has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yunus, who shared the $1.4-million prize Friday with the Grameen Bank that he founded 30 years ago, pioneered the concept of “microcredit.” It allows very poor people, who don’t qualify for traditional loans, to get loans of as little as a few dollars without collateral. The banks’ shareholders are the impoverished people it supports.
Yunus, 65, and his bank were honored for “their efforts to create economic and social development from below,” announced the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway.
As his jubilant nation cheered, Yunus said in the capital of Dhaka that he wants “to work to create some more new things in the world” and would use the award money to start a company to produce inexpensive yet nutritional food for poor people and set up an eye hospital to treat impoverished patients.
Yunus said winning made him “feel more encouraged” about developing other “poverty alleviation” projects. He said he hoped “many countries will follow us” with programs to fight poverty.
In Oslo, the Nobel committee said “lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty.”
“Microcredit is one such means,” the committee said in a statement. “Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights.”
The Nobel shines a spotlight on a form of “social capitalism” that has gained currency in recent years, propelled by high-profile supporters like former President Clinton, rock star Bono and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Yunus’ “revolutionary” belief that the world’s poorest people were not only good credit risks but potentially big business has led to the creation of a multibillion-dollar microcredit industry that is now being courted by government leaders and investment banks anxious to replicate Bangladesh’s success.
“I’ve always said he’s the closest I will ever come to meeting Gandhi, he’s simply unmoved by any obstacle or any argument,” said Bill Clapp, an heir to the Weyerhaeuser fortune and founder of Global Partnerships, a Seattle-based microfinance group that has partnered with Grameen in Central America.
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