Rogier van den Brink
Lead Economist, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Department, East Asia Region, The World Bank

Rogier van den Brink has a Masters in Sociology from the Agricultural University in Wageningen, the Netherlands, and a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has research and development experience in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mongolia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

He did fieldwork in Cameroon, studying their variety of the stokvels (rotating savings and credit associations), assisted the government of Burkina Faso with development statistics and agricultural extension, and worked as a Research Associate for Cornell University analyzing the impact of structural adjustment on the poor in Tanzania, before joining the World Bank in 1992. There, he worked on agriculture and land reform in South Africa (1992-4), was Country Economist for Lesotho (1994-6), Special Assistant to the Vice Presidents for Africa (1996-8), and Deputy Resident Representative in Zimbabwe (1998-2002).

He moved to South Africa in 2002 at the request of the government to assist with land reform. In 2006 he became the Senior Country Economist for South Africa. In October 2009, he took up a new position as Lead Economist in the East Asia Region, so far mainly assisting the government of Mongolia in dealing with the adverse impact of the collapse of the copper price in mid-2008 by undertaking a series of policy reforms in fiscal management, social protection, mining policies and banking sector restructuring.

His article (together with Daniel Bromley and Jean-Paul Chavas) "The Economics of Cain and Abel" about the archetypical conflict between herders and farmers the world over won the Dudley Seers Award for best written article in the Journal of Development Studies in 1994. He is married to Natasha Mukherjee and has three kids: Amelie Rayguedesama, Raphael Philip, and Daniela Nyasha. His hobbies are fly-fishing and playing in the rock band Mid Life.