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Rik Habraken

Department
Impact Economics
Title
Senior Advisor

 
Rik Habraken is a senior advisor with a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia (UK). He specialises in rigorous impact evaluation and applied econometrics, with a strong focus on sustainable agricultural development and socio-economic well-being in sub-Saharan African countries.

He currently leads studies on the effects of cash transfers to cocoa and coffee farming households in West Africa, with the aim to improve incomes, enhance resilience, and tackle child labour prevalence in the region. Additionally, he focuses on evaluating the effects of a large-scale horticulture program on the livelihoods of horticulture farmers in Northern Nigeria.

He has led complex and large-scale impact evaluations, such as the AGRA-PIATA program across seven sub-Saharan African countries, and has successfully coordinated international teams of researchers, field coordinators, and enumerators. In these projects, he was responsible for the methodological design of impact evaluations, including designing the sampling frameworks, sampling procedures, survey development, and data analysis.

Apart from his contributions to sustainable agricultural development, Rik has also conducted research on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and published papers, articles and studies on youth aspirations in low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. His work in this area has shed light on critical issues concerning youth empowerment and reproductive healthcare.

Rik’s work aims to foster evidence-based policymaking, and his expertise lies in quantitative analyses, including various (quasi-) experimental approaches, such as randomised control trials, propensity score matching, difference-in-difference estimation, and instrumental variable estimation.

He has extensive regional experience in countries such as Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania. Rik is a member of the advisory board of the Living Income Community of Practice (LICOP).

Projects

  • 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)

  • A machine learning tool to estimate net annual income of cocoa and coffee farming households

    • Institute
    • Project

    What is the income of farming households and does it afford a decent living standard? This is a key question to answer in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of interventions seeking to improve livelihoods of farmers at the starting points of global supply chains such as cocoa and coffee. The answer requires primary data collection […]

    Read more : A machine learning tool to estimate net annual income of cocoa and coffee farming households

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

    • Institute
    • Project

    Poverty among cocoa farming households is still a key driver of child labour. The average cocoa farming household in West Africa earns less than one-third of the established living income needed to afford a place to live, food for the entire family, health care, and clothing and education for children, and cannot put some money […]

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

  • HortiNigeria

    • Institute
    • Project

    Nigeria is currently unable to meet the local demand for vegetables, with a supply gap of around 13 million metric tons. The HortiNigeria programme aims narrow this gap by transforming and accelerating the development of a sustainable and inclusive horticulture sector that contributes to food and nutrition security in rural communities and alleviates poverty. The […]

    Read more : HortiNigeria

  • Annual Outcome Surveys for the AGRA PIATA programme

    • Institute
    • Project

    The Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) intends to catalyse and sustain an inclusive agricultural transformation in Africa by increasing incomes and improving food security for 30 million farming households in 11 focus countries. KIT is supporting AGRA in achieving this ambition by measuring and assessing progress at a household and agricultural systems level. […]

    Read more : Annual Outcome Surveys for the AGRA PIATA programme

  • Unleashing the Potential of Cocoa Households to Earn a Living Income

    • Institute
    • Project

    The Nestlé Cocoa Plan (NCP) Elite programme aims to unleash the potential of a small selection of cocoa farmers and learn from them about how the programme can be expanded to help more farmers earn a living income. KIT assists Nestlé in understanding how successful this programme currently is and how it can be scaled up. Earning a living income is elusive for most cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire  Only a small segment of cocoa-growing households in Côte d’Ivoire earn a living income. […]

    Read more : Unleashing the Potential of Cocoa Households to Earn a Living Income

Publications