Sporting funky glasses, a hipster beard and a ponytail, Muhammad Ali Mansour stands proudly in front of his modest convenience store in urban Beirut. He had been an employee in this store for seven years before he decided to buy and run the establishment himself. Having been approached by an AMEEN credit officer based at the local Credit Libanais Branch he decided to apply for credit. Eight months ago, Muhammad received a $1,500 loan, which he used to help finance the purchase and expansion of his supermarket. “The expansion definitely brought more customers,” he says. Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus offered his first micro-credit loan in Bangladesh 32 years ago, using $27 from his own pocket. Since then, the concept of micro-finance has spread around the world. Lebanon’s version is dominated by a lending house known as Access to Micro-finance and Enhanced Enterprise Niches (AMEEN), which got its start
