Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad Yunus (Bengali: মূহাম্মদ ইউনূস; born 28 June 1940) is a Bangladeshi economist and social business entrepreneur. He led Bangladesh’s transition to democratic governance after the mass uprising in July 2024, which resulted in the ouster of its former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. During the transition period he served as the 5th Chief Adviser of Bangladesh from 2024 to 2026.. Yunus pioneered the modern concept of microcredit and microfinance, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. He is the founder of Grameen Bank and the first Bangladeshi to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Born in Hathazari, Chittagong, Yunus passed his matriculation and intermediate examinations from Chittagong Collegiate School and Chittagong College, respectively. He completed his BA from University of Dhaka and joined as a lecturer in Chittagong College. He obtained his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University in the United States.

After the famine of 1974, Yunus started to work on poverty alleviation in Bangladesh. He began experimenting with microfinance in the late 1970s. In 1983, the Grameen Bank was established. The success of the Grameen microfinance model inspired similar efforts in about 100 developing countries and even in developed countries including the United States. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. Yunus has received several other national and international honors, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.

In 2012, Yunus became Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland, a position he held until 2018. Previously, he was a professor of economics at Chittagong University in Bangladesh. He published several books related to his finance work. He is a founding board member of Grameen America and Grameen Foundation, which supports microcredit. Yunus also served in the board of directors of the United Nations Foundation, a public charity to support UN causes, from 1998 to 2021.

Following the resignation of Sheikh Hasina, President Mohammed Shahabuddin gave Yunus a mandate to form an interim government, acceding to calls from Students Against Discrimination for his appointment. His government has appointed a Constitutional Reform Commission to draft revisions to the Constitution of Bangladesh, and also hold the 2026 general election and constitutional referendum on the July Charter alongside the election.

His name was listed in The 500 Most Influential Muslims in 2024. In 2025, he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Early life and education

The third of nine children, Muhammad Yunus was born on 28 June 1940 to a Bengali Muslim family of Saudagars in the village of Bathua, by the Kaptai road at Hathazari in the Chittagong District of Bengal Presidency (now in Bangladesh). His father was Haji Muhammad Dula Mia Saudagar, a Sufi jeweller, and his mother was Sufia Khatun. His early childhood was spent in the village. In 1944, his family moved to the city of Chittagong, and he moved from his village school to Lamabazar Primary School. By 1949, his mother was afflicted with psychological illness. Later, he passed the matriculation examination from Chittagong Collegiate School ranking 16th out of 39,000 students in East Pakistan. During his school years, he was an active Boy Scout, and travelled to West Pakistan and India in 1952, and to Canada in 1955 to attend Jamborees. Later, while Yunus was studying at Chittagong College, he became active in cultural activities and won awards for drama. In 1957, he enrolled in the Department of Economics at Dhaka University and completed his BA in 1960 and MA in 1961.

Career

Early career

After his graduation, Yunus joined the Bureau of Economics at Dhaka University as a research assistant to economists Nurul Islam and Rehman Sobhan. Later, he was appointed lecturer in economics in Chittagong College in 1961. During that time, he also set up a profitable packaging factory on the side. In 1965, he received a Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States. He obtained his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University through their Graduate Program in Economic Development in 1969. From 1969 to 1972, Yunus was an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.

During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Yunus founded a citizen's committee and ran the Bangladesh Information Center, with other Bangladeshis in the United States, to raise support for liberation. He also published the Bangladesh Newsletter from his home in Nashville. After the War, he returned to Bangladesh and was appointed to the government's Planning Commission headed by Nurul Islam. However, he found the job boring and resigned to join Chittagong University as head of the Economics department. After observing the famine of 1974, he became involved in poverty reduction and established a rural economic programme as a research project. In 1975, he developed a Nabajug Tebhaga Khamar (lit. 'New Era Three-share Farm') which the government adopted as the Packaged Input Programme. To make the project more effective, Yunus and his associates proposed the Gram Sarkar (lit. 'Village government') programme. Introduced by President Ziaur Rahman in the late 1970s, the government formed 40,392 village governments as a fourth layer of government in 2003. On 2 August 2005, in response to a petition by Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), the High Court declared village governments illegal and unconstitutional.

His concept of microcredit for supporting innovators in multiple developing countries also inspired programmes such as the Info lady Social Entrepreneurship Programme.

Grameen and microfinance

In 1976, during visits to the poorest households in the village of Jobra near Chittagong University, Yunus discovered that very small loans could make a disproportionate difference to a poor person. Village women who made bamboo furniture had to take usurious loans to buy bamboo, and repay their profits to the lenders. Traditional banks did not want to make tiny loans at reasonable interest to the poor due to high risk of default. But Yunus believed that, given the chance, the poor will not need to pay high interest on the money, can keep any profits from their own labour, and hence microcredit was a viable business model. Yunus lent US$27 of his money to 42 women in the village, who made a profit of BDT 0.50 (US$0.02) each on the loan. Thus, Yunus is credited with the idea of microcredit.

In December 1976, Yunus finally secured a loan from the government Janata Bank to lend to the poor in Jobra. The institution continued to operate, securing loans from other banks for its projects. By 1982, it had 28,000 members. On 1 October 1983, the pilot project began operation as a full-fledged bank for poor Bangladeshis and was renamed Grameen Bank ("Village Bank"). By July 2007, Grameen had issued US$6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers. To ensure repayment, the bank uses a system of "solidarity groups". These small informal groups apply together for loans and its members act as co-guarantors of repayment and support one another's efforts at economic self-advancement.

In the late 1980s, Grameen started to diversify by attending to underutilized fishing ponds and irrigation pumps like deep tube wells. In 1989, these diversified interests started growing into separate organisations. The fisheries project became Grameen Motsho ("Grameen Fisheries Foundation") and the irrigation project became Grameen Krishi ("Grameen Agriculture Foundation"). In time, the Grameen initiative grew into a multi-faceted group of profitable and non-profit ventures, including major projects like Grameen Trust and Grameen Fund, which runs equity projects like Grameen Software Limited, Grameen CyberNet Limited, and Grameen Knitwear Limited, as well as Grameen Telecom, which has a stake in Grameenphone (GP), the biggest private phone company in Bangladesh. From its start in March 1997 to 2007, GP's Village Phone (Polli Phone) project had brought cell-phone ownership to 260,000 rural poor in over 50,000 villages.

The success of the Grameen microfinance model inspired similar efforts in about 100 developing countries and even in developed countries including the United States. Many microcredit projects retain Grameen's emphasis of lending to women. More than 94% of Grameen loans have gone to women, who suffer disproportionately from poverty and who are more likely than men to devote their earnings to their families.

For his work with Grameen, Yunus was named an Ashoka: Innovators for the Public Global Academy Member in 2001. According to Rashidul Bari, the Grameen's social business model has gone from being theory to an inspiring practice adopted globally by leading universities, entrepreneurs, social business and corporations.