Muhammad Yunus founds Grameen Bank

In 1976 the Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, a professor at Chittagong University, lent 27 dollars from his own pocket to 42 women basket-weavers in the village of Jobra, who were at the mercy of moneylenders, and found that they repaid. He developed a system of small loans, 'microcredit', without collateral to poor people, mostly women, organised in groups that guarantee one another. The project became an independent bank, Grameen Bank, in 1983. It has lent billions of dollars to more than 9 million borrowers, with repayment rates of about 97 per cent. Yunus and the bank shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Open on the timeline