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Thursday 19th October :: Noble Peace Prize

Without doubts, Mohamed Yunus and his Grameen Bank deserved each and every piece of the Noble Peace Prize. This is a man who left lecturing in economics to develop solutions to abject poverty that was biting the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh, in the 1970s. Economics is basically about the study of allocation of scarce resources which Yunus could not have done in class..

One of way of acquiring world peace is putting measures of reducing poverty, if not eradicating it altogether. Yunus put into practice what he knew as a professor and at the same time, what he was teaching his university students to practice in the future. Indeed, he went ahead and developed customized solutions in the field, based on what he could not teach practically in class.

In the end, he pioneered the micro-financing concept which is not only popular but also applied almost throughout the world. Here in Kenya, the concept has been implemented widely by the micro-finance banks and institutions. The concept initially operates as merry go rounds where groups of individuals form security for one another as they borrow from the micro–credit institutions. As the level of income of theindividuals increases, they end up developing micro –businesses and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), eventually.

Over the years there are many people in the business community who have graduated into big business having started ff from the merry go rounds. I am sure K-Rep and Equity bank particularly, can name several examples of such people in case of need. I find the work of Mohamed Yunus to be a major contribution to improvement of world peace through increased reduction of poverty. The Noble peace prize committee deserves praise for recognizing Yunus’ efforts.

Editor

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