The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plans to donate 38 million dollars to set up savings accounts for people receiving micro-credit.

Eleven million of the world's poor in 12 African, Asian and Latin American countries will make use of the accounts. Up till the present, the focus in micro-credit has been on granting small loans to independent entrepreneurs. The Gates Foundation says there has been little attention paid to what the recipients were able to do with money they earned, and that there was often a lack of safe bank accounts.

Bill and Melinda Gates' charity hopes banks will now start to invest in smart solutions which allow people in sparsely-populated areas to bank their money. These include the use of mobile telephones and mini-computers.

Photos: Bread shop in Kenya set up with micro-credit (Flickr / hodag) and Melinda and Bill Gates at a meeting of the World Economic Forum