By Uwe Buse

Microloans were invented to help the poorest of the poor help themselves. Now major banks and pension funds are getting into the business, as they discover that the interest paid by the poor can produce high returns. Is it aid or exploitation?

Yunus has an opinion on almost everything, and he is quick to express it. But when it comes to Shafiqual Haque Choudhury, Yunus suddenly becomes a man of few words, barely able to choke out "we'll see."Like Yunus, Shafiqual Haque Choudhury is also involved in the business of eliminating poverty. Choudhury, too, is eloquent, and clearly loves speaking to large audiences, but when he is asked about Yunus, he says, tersely: "He has his achievements."

Yunus and Choudhury both live in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, a densely packed metropolis that expands farther into the surrounding countryside everyday. Both Yunus and Choudhury have built skyscrapers among the city's run-down shacks. And there is another similarity: Both manage banks. Yunus is permitted to use the word bank to refer to his organization, Grameen Bank. But for legal reasons Choudhury's organization, ASA, cannot call itself a bank. It is formally a non-governmental organization (NGO).

For years Muhammad Yunus reigned as the public face of microfinance. It seemed only right when, in 2006, the Bangladeshi economist cum social entrepreneur and his Grameen Bank shared the Nobel peace prize for a micro-lending revolution that has helped millions to earn their own way out of poverty. Yet for the past year or so, microfinance has had another public face, one that troubles people like Mr Yunus. CompartamosBanco argues that the best way for microfinance to help the poor is for it to make a socking great profit.

Since Compartamos listed its shares for over $1 billion in April 2007, it has stirred up an increasingly fierce debate. To Mr Yunus and its other critics, the Mexican bank is no better than an old-fashioned loan shark, earning its huge profits by charging poor borrowers a usurious interest rate of at least 79% a year. Perhaps sensing opinion turning against it, the bank has belatedly sprung to its own defence, issuing a defiant justification of its business in an 11-page "letter to our peers". And it manages to make a convincing case for its strategy of fighting poverty with profits.

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New Delhi: Shyama Kumari has a new-found sense of confidence. The 20-year-old college goer taught part-time at a local school for two years and saved Rs8,000, which she has put in a bank account. Her banker? The local drug store.

Kumari isn’t the only one who banks in a shop and shops in a bank. Around 1,400 people in her neighbourhood, Uttam Nagar—a lower middle class colony in West Delhi—have, through shops that include grocers and chemists, opened accounts that now have between Rs20 and Rs 14,000.

It's already launched in Kenya, Afghanistan and Tanzania. And now a mobile money-transfer service from Vodafone is to reach 40 million customers in India. Meanwhile, Microsoft Innovation Centres in Rwanda, Nigeria, Uganda and Morocco are set to provide aspiring business people with the technology to launch new products. And in India, personalised commercial information is being texted to the mobile phones of thousands of farmers in their own language.

These three groundbreaking initiatives were among those revealed at the Business Call To Action conference in May, when CEOs from some of the world's biggest companies unveiled plans designed to both fight poverty and boost business. Hosted by DFID and UNDP, the event also featured President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President John Kufuor of Ghana. It is the start of a co-ordinated initiative designed to engage the business community with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by enabling poor people to access up-to-the-minute information, money and business expertise, as well as creating new commercial and employment opportunities. Big name companies who have already signed up to the Call for Action include Citi Group, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters and Sumitomo Chemical. Within five years it is estimated that initiatives from these and other companies will save almost half a million lives, create thousands of jobs, and benefit millions of poor people across Africa and Asia.

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It's no secret in the business world - if you want to start your own business with little risk, you buy a franchise.

For decades, successful American businesses have been franchised, allowing would-be entrepreneurs a safe place to begin their business. Thanks to a team of BYU researchers and developers, the success of franchises is being used to bring people out of poverty through a new initiative called micro-franchise.

For years, economic development practitioners have used micro-finance as a tool to alleviate poverty. Micro-finance organizations give small loans, or micro-loans, to individuals otherwise unable to obtain necessary capital to start or grow a small business.

Many recipients of micro-loans, however, have struggled to get their businesses off the ground, lacking basic business skills.

"Giving micro-credit helps, but it's not the full package," said Jason Fairbourne, micro-franchise initiative director at BYU.

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