Muhammad Yunus (born June 28, 1940) is a social entrepreneur, philanthropist and Nobel laureate. He has been serving as the Chief Advisor to the Interim Government of Bangladesh since 8 August 2024 . [ 1 ] He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank and promoting the concept of microcredit and microfinance. [ 2 ] He has been awarded several national and international honors, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010. [ 3 ] He is one of seven people to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal. [ 4 ]
In 2012, he became Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland , a position he held until 2018. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] Before that, he was a professor in the Department of Economics at Chittagong University . [ 7 ] He published several books on his finances. He is a founding board member of Rural America and the Rural Foundation , which supports microfinance . [ 8 ] He also served on the board of directors of the United Nations Foundation from 1998 to 2021. [ 9 ] In 2022, he partnered with the Global Esports Federation to create the eSports for Development movement. [ 10 ]
On 5 August 2024, the non-cooperation movement led to the resignation of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina [ 11 ] and on 6 August 2024, President Mohammad Sahabuddin appointed President Yunus to serve as the head of the interim government of Bangladesh based on student demands after the dissolution of the national parliament. [ 1 ] His acquittal on appeal the next day on charges of labor code violations seen as politically motivated facilitated his return home and recruitment. [ 12 ] He took over as Chief Advisor to the Interim Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh on 8 August 2024. [ 1 ] He also served as an advisor to the Department of Primary and Mass Education, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Environment and Forests in the 1996 caretaker government. [ 13 ]
Family and Childhood
Muhammad Yunus was born on 28 June 1940 in a Bengali Muslim family in Bathua village of Shikarpur union [ 14 ] of Hathajari upazila of Chittagong, Bengal Presidency of British India (present-day Bangladesh ) . [ 15 ] [ 16 ] He is the third of nine siblings. [ 17 ] His father Haji Dula Mia Saudagar was a jeweler, and his mother Sufia Khatun . He spent his childhood in the village. In 1944, his family moved to Chittagong city and he moved from his village school to Lamabazar Primary School. [ 15 ] [ 18 ] Around 1949, her mother began to suffer from mental illness. Later he passed the matriculation examination from Chittagong Collegiate School and ranked 16th out of 39 thousand students of East Pakistan . [ 18 ]
He was an active Boy Scout during his school days and participated in jamborees in West Pakistan and India in 1952 and in Canada in 1955 . Later, when Yunus was studying at Chittagong College, he became active in cultural activities and won awards for drama. [ 18 ] In 1957, he was admitted to the Economics Department of Dhaka University and completed his BA in 1960 and MA in 1961.
After graduation
After graduation, he joined the Bureau of Economics as a research assistant in the economic studies of Nurul Islam and Rehman Sobhan . [ 18 ] Later he was appointed as a lecturer in economics at Chittagong College in 1961. [ 18 ] At the same time he also set up a profitable packaging factory. [ 16 ] In 1965, he received a Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States. In 1971, he received his PhD in Economics from the Graduate Program in Economic Development (GPED) at Vanderbilt University . [ 19 ] [ 20 ] 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, he established a civic committee and along with other Bangladeshis ran the Bangladesh Information Center to gather support for the liberation war in the United States. [ 18 ] He also published the 'Bangladesh Newsletter' from his home in Nashville . When the war ended, he returned to Bangladesh and was appointed to the government's Planning Commission headed by Nurul Islam. However, the work became boring to him, he resigned there [ 21 ] and joined the Department of Economics at Chittagong University as an Associate Professor and served as the Head of the Department. He was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1975 and held this position till 1989. [ 22 ]
Yunus began his struggle against poverty in 1974 during the famine in Bangladesh. He realizes that small amounts of credit can be very effective in improving the quality of life of poor people. At that time he launched the Rural Economic Project for research purposes. In 1974, Muhammad Yunus established Tevaga farm which was acquired by the government under the package programme. [ 18 ] Yunus and his colleagues proposed the 'Village Government' program to make the project more effective. [ 23 ] which was introduced by President Ziaur Rahman in the late 1970s . Government Under this programme, 40,392 village governments were formed in 2003, which functioned as the fourth tier of government. However, on 2 August 2005, following a petition filed by the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), the High Court declared the village government illegal and unconstitutional. [ 24 ]
Yunus's microfinance concept to support innovators in various developing countries inspires programs like the 'Info Lady Social Entrepreneurship' programme. [ 25 ] [ 26 ] [ 27 ]
Early career
In 1976, while meeting poor families in Jobra village near Chittagong University, Yunus discovered that very small loans can make a huge difference to poor people. Village women who made bamboo furniture had to take loans at high interest rates to buy bamboo and pay their profits to the lenders. Traditional banks did not want to give small loans to the poor at reasonable interest rates because of the high default risk. [ 28 ] But Yunus believed that microcredit could be a viable business model, given the opportunity for the poor to retain the profits of their own labor without having to pay high interest rates. [ 29 ] Yunus lent 856 taka from his own money to 42 women in the village, who earned 0.50 taka (US$0.02) per loan. Yunus is therefore credited with the idea of microfinance.
In December 1976, Yunus took a loan from the Government Janata Bank to provide loans to the poor in Jobra village. The company continued to work with loans from other banks for its projects. By 1982 it had 28,000 members. On 1 October 1983, this pilot project began functioning as a full-fledged bank for poor Bangladeshis and was named Grameen Bank ("Village Bank"). By July 2007, Grameen Bank had issued USD 6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers. [ 30 ] The bank uses a system called "solidarity groups" to ensure repayment of loans. These small informal groups apply for loans together and its members act as co-guarantors for loan repayments and support each other's efforts at economic self-development. [ 31 ]
–Muhammad Yunus said about the reasons for the formation of Grameen Bank [ 32 ]
In the late 1980s, Grameen Bank started working on issues such as renovating disused fishing ponds and installing deep tube wells. In 1989 these diverse projects began to grow into separate organizations. The fisheries scheme became Grameen Matsya ("Grameen Matsya Foundation") and the irrigation scheme became Grameen Krishi ("Grameen Krishi Foundation"). [ 33 ] Over time the Grameen Bank venture became a diversified group of for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises with major projects such as Grameen Trust and Grameen Fund, which run equity projects such as Grameen Software Limited, Grameen Cybernet Limited, and Grameen Knitwear Limited, [ 34 ] as well as Grameen Telecom, which has a stake in Grameenphone (GP), is the largest private phone company in Bangladesh. [ 35 ] From March 1997 to 2007, GP's Village Phone (Palli Phone) project brought cell-phone ownership to 260,000 rural poor in more than 50,000 villages. [ 36 ]
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আমি ও আকজন যোদ্ধা  |
Dr. Muhammad Yunus | |
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| Chief Adviser to the Interim Government | |
in charge | |
| Occupied office on 8th August 2024 | |
| the president | Mohammad Sahabuddin |
| predecessor | Sheikh Hasina ( as Prime Minister ) |
| Personal details | |
| the birth | 28 June 1940 Hathajari , Chittagong District , Bengal Pradesh , British India (now Hathajari , Chittagong District , Bangladesh ) |
| citizenship | British India (1940–1947) Pakistani (1947–1971) Bangladeshi (1971–present) |
| nationality | Bangladeshi |
| political party | Citizen Power (2007) Independent (2007–present) |
| Spouse | Vera Forstenko ( b. 1970; divorced 1979) Afrozi Yunus ( b. 1983 ) |
| child | Monika Yunus • Dina |
| relatives | Muhammad Ibrahim (brother) |
| education |
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| occupation |
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| reward |
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| Signature |  |
| website | personal |
| Higher education activities | |
| subject | the economy |
| school or tradition | |
| Institution | |
| significant work | |
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