Oprah adds a powerful backing to micro-lending.

Oprah Winfrey, daytime talk-show guru has added her not inconsiderable weight, to backing micro-lending in the developing world.

This is seen by many as a significant move, her influence is very substantial indeed, mention of a new book on her talk-show instantly propels it is to the top of the bestseller’s list.

Her extremely broad appeal with the American public is now being used by her to bring attention to the concept of micro-lending.

The worldwide credit crisis is causing huge problems for multi-billion-dollar deals in the world’s financial circles, but in many developing countries credit has never been a problem, as legitimate lending sources have not been available to ordinary people, and small-time entrepreneurs.

Now Oprah is pushing the concept that if you have $25 or $50 available, any regular person in the western world can turn themselves into, an international micro financier.

Kiva is an organisation that brings together small individual lenders, and impoverished people throughout the, so-called Third World.

There is a man in the poor island state of Togo who refurbishes used shoes and resells them. He needed a loan of just $50, this was not available to him in his home country, but a regular guy named Steve Thomas, from Chicago, made the loan to the man, and was repaid in full.

Since then, Steve has made a further 80 loans, to small-time entrepreneurs worldwide, from South America to Northern Asia

2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus is credited with ‘inventing’ modern micro lending in the 1980s, to assist the rural poor in Bangladesh. Kiva is the first organisation to bring direct contact between the Western General public and needy Third World business people via their website.