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Oumou Diallo

Department
Impact Economics
Title
Senior Advisor
Phone
+31205688230

Oumou Diallo is a development economist specializing in microeconomic impact evaluations and financial inclusion. She holds a Ph.D. in Development Economics from Sherbrooke University in Quebec, Canada. Her academic research focuses on the challenges related to financing micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) excluded from traditional microcredit and commercial bank markets.

Oumou’s expertise builds on the numerous international development issues she has worked on (forced displacement, cash transfers, education, agriculture, and gender) and her experience with the private sector and international organizations.

She also has extensive regional experience in various countries (Uganda, Guinea, Benin, Niger, Mali, Togo, Panama, Ivory Coast) which allows her to tailor interventions to diverse socio-cultural contexts.

Since joining KIT in 2021, Oumou’s work has focused on agricultural development, integrated seed systems development, education, gender, and financial inclusion. She uses her expertise in rigorous impact evaluation to design, implement, analyze, and evaluate the effectiveness of development interventions using econometrics techniques (propensity score matching, difference-in-difference estimation, regression discontinuity design, etc.).

Her commitment to evidence-based practices, through the dissemination of knowledge about development programs, ensures that her work contributes meaningfully to the field.

Among other projects, Oumou has mostly worked on evaluating conditional cash transfer programs for cocoa farming households. This project aims to uplift the lives of those engaged in cocoa production, an essential sector in multiple African countries (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Cameroon). By evaluating the impact of cash transfers, Oumou seeks to identify sustainable solutions to improve livelihoods and reduce poverty.

Projects

  • Understanding the Income-Child Labour Nexus in Agricultural Commodity Sectors

    • Institute
    • Project

    Child labour remains widespread in agricultural commodities. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where much of the world’s cocoa, coffee and cashew is produced, the number of children in child labour rose from 70 million in 2016 to 87 million in 2024. At the same time, cocoa, coffee and cashew farming families from West and East Africa earn […]

    Read more : Understanding the Income-Child Labour Nexus in Agricultural Commodity Sectors

  • Towards more effective ways to address child labour in the cocoa sector

    • Institute
    • Project

    Child labour remains a persistent human rights violation in the cocoa sector, impacting children’s physical and mental health while depriving them of educational opportunities. The cocoa sector is increasingly responding to this issue by implementing innovative programmes, targeting the root causes of child labour, such as poverty and a lack of access to quality education. […]

    Read more : Towards more effective ways to address child labour in the cocoa sector

  • Nestlé Income Accelerator Programme (IAP)

    • Institute
    • Project

    This innovative intervention aims to tackle child labour, decrease poverty, promote diversification and push for more gender equality. The Income Accelerator Programme (IAP) is a four-year program initiated by Nestlé and six of their traders aimed at increasing the income levels of 10,000 cocoa farming households in Côte d’Ivoire while reducing the prevalence and risk of […]

    Read more : Nestlé Income Accelerator Programme (IAP)

  • EnRoute – To Reduce the Living Income Gap and Child Labour

    • Institute
    • Project

    Low incomes continue to be a root cause of some of the most persistent problems in many agricultural commodity sectors. To find practical, innovative, and cost-effective ways to support cocoa farming households towards Living Income, the Netherlands-based commodity trading company Export Trading Group (ETG) and its sustainability office, the Beyond Beans Foundation (BBF), in partnership with Oxfam Novib […]

    Read more : EnRoute – To Reduce the Living Income Gap and Child Labour

  • The Cocoa Household Income Study (CHIS) Programme

    • Institute
    • Project

    The Cocoa Household Income Study (CHIS) Programme is a sector-wide effort to create a harmonised methodology for measuring living income in the cocoa sector. The initiative is led and funded by World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) and Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), in collaboration with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and […]

    Read more : The Cocoa Household Income Study (CHIS) Programme

  • Private Seed Sector Development Burundi

    • Institute
    • Project

    The Private Seed Sector Development (PSSD) project aims to double the production and incomes of 108,000 farmer households in Burundi. KIT is working with private and public sector partners to promote the development of a private sector-led seed industry that is able to provide farmers with sustainable access to high-quality seed and agricultural advisory services. […]

    Read more : Private Seed Sector Development Burundi

Publications

  • Endline Evaluation

    • Evaluation
    • Report

    This endline evaluation assesses the two-year impact of the EnRoute programme, a partnership between ETG–Beyond Beans Foundation, Oxfam Novib, and KIT Institute. The programme set out to test practical, scalable approaches to closing the living income (LI) gap and reducing child labour (CL) among 599 farming households.  The programme tested three intervention models among cocoa-farming […]

    Year of publication
    December 2025

    Downloads

  • Alternative Income Generation

    • Paper

    As the majority of cocoa producers in West Africa continue to earn far below a living income, the concept of living income has become central to discussions on sustainable cocoa. While efforts have traditionally focused on increasing cocoa productivity, there is growing recognition that income diversification is essential to reduce vulnerability to price volatility and […]

    Year of publication
    December 2025

    Downloads

  • A Comparative Review of Living Wage and Living Income Benchmarking Approaches

    • Review
    • Working Paper

    This paper offers a systematic review of leading living wage (LW) and living income (LI) benchmarking methodologies to help users select the most appropriate approach for their specific context and purpose. Drawing on criteria developed by the Living Income Community of Practice—such as data quality, local adaptability, and stakeholder ownership—the review highlights the strengths and […]

    Year of publication
    June 2025

    Downloads

Other Publications