Nobel Peace Prize goes to someone who deserves it

Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank received their Nobel Peace Prize yesterday. They've managed to go a few years without courting controversy with this prize, and I'd say Yunus' microcredit work has definitely earned recognition.

Oddly enough, Yunus had two reasons for visiting Norway at the weekend - firstly to pick up the prize, secondly to have meetings with Telenor about Grameen Mobile - now the larges mobile phone company in Bangladesh, Grameen Mobile was originally set up with Telenor owning 51% of the shares. Yunus' long term intention was that the mobile phone company would eventually be owned entirely by the poor of Bangladesh. The problem is that the company is rather lucrative, the original agreement was rather vague, and Telenor naturally bought up another 11% of the shares when Grameen Bank didn't buy them.