Launched in 2022, Nestlé’s Income Accelerator Program aims to reduce the Living Income (LI) gap for cocoa farming households while addressing child labor risks. Centered around four key areas – school enrollment, good agricultural practices (GAPs), agroforestry, and income diversification – the program provides conditional cash transfers and resources to encourage farming practices that benefit the environment and local community.

This report examines the progress of the test-at-scale phase after 30 months of implementation,
focusing on the programme’s effects on farming practices, income, resilience, and well-being.

Resilience in this context refers to a farm households’ ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from shocks like poor agroclimatic conditions, volatile cocoa prices, and rising living costs.

The report highlights the programme’s positive effects on farm investments, GAPs, resilience,
net income levels, and wellbeing indicators and shares recommendations for some challenges which hinder the programme’s full potential.

Key findings:

• In 2024, the programme made good progress across its four key areas: school enrollment, good agricultural practices (GAPs), agroforestry, and income diversification.
• The programme further “accelerated” cocoa farm investments and the adoption of GAPs.
• The programme continues to have a significant impact on cocoa productivity and the cocoa volumes produced by participating farm households. There is a substantial programme effect on cocoa revenue and cocoa profits in 2024.
• The programme contributed to an estimated average net income increase of US$605 in 2024, implying a 15% increase that can be attributed to the programme.
• Due to higher costs of living and an increase in household size, which can be attributed to the programme, the LI benchmark for Accelerator households became substantially higher in 2024. This means the LI gap is not statistically different from that at the start of the program in 2022, despite higher incomes.
• There is no evidence that the programme has led to a more diversified income base for cocoa farming households. 
• There is strong evidence that the programme has substantially improved the resilience and the well-being of cocoa farming households in areas like financial inclusion through VSLAs, food security and women’s empowerment.
• Cash transfers are found to be a critical mechanism, explaining the positive impact on resilience and well-being.
• There is no evidence that the program has improved school enrollment in 2024, although we did find this in 2023.
   

To find out more about these findings and recommendations, download the report in the link below.

Note: A minor correction was made to the cash transfer amounts on page 10 and 23 on 3 July 2025. This is the updated version of the report. If you downloaded the report before this date, please use this updated version.”