Bangladeshi Government Puts Politics over Poor in Sacking Microfinance Leader

Elizabeth Hamrick / March 07, 2011

He may have won a Nobel Peace Prize for spurring economic growth in the developing world, but on March 2 the government of Bangladesh ordered Muhammad Yunus to leave his post as managing director of the Grameen Bank, which is credited for starting the spread of microfinance across the globe.

Yunus founded the Grameen Bank and built it from the ground up to become the powerhouse it is today. Using microfinance, it has lent money to countless numbers of poverty-stricken women across the country and helped reduce starvation and illiteracy, among other problems, in Bangladesh. It has become a beacon across the globe as a sustainable solution to world poverty, providing people living in countries with little economic freedom with the capital necessary to tap into their individual entrepreneurial abilities and create their own source of income. (more…)