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Hopper, Robert Benjamin

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Hopper, Robert
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Last updated:August 5, 2025
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Robert is an Economist with the Poverty & Equity Global Practice and the Health, Nutrition & Population Global Practice at the World Bank. His work focuses on understanding poverty dynamics, promoting self-reliance among displaced populations, and improving maternal and newborn health outcomes through service delivery redesign. He holds master’s degrees in Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies and in Public Policy from University College London. Robert joined the World Bank in 2021.

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    Making Refugee Self-Reliance Work: From Aid to Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-09) Hoogeveen, Johannes; Silva, Karishma; Hopper, Robert Benjamin
    "Making Refugee Self-Reliance Work: From Aid to Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa" advocates for the enhancement of refugee self-reliance as a strategic, humane, development approach to refugee assistance. Facilitating refugees’ capacity to support themselves through gainful work not only upholds their dignity and autonomy but also offers socioeconomic benefits to host communities by unlocking opportunities for shared investment and development. The report demonstrates how refugee self-reliance in Sub-Saharan Africa remains elusive and identifies various reasons why this is the case: encampment limits the scope for self-reliance; restrictions on refugees’ right to work hinder self-sufficiency; small allocations of infertile land make even subsistence farming impossible; aid delivery in specific areas contributes to settlement patterns in which skills and economic opportunities do not match; economic development in remote, resource-scarce regions is unsustainable; and dependence on aid shifts funding priorities from long-term development to unproductive care and maintenance models. To overcome these challenges, the report outlines five areas for policy action: 1. Ending restrictive encampment policies 2. Boosting refugees’ economic participation 3. Supporting host communities 4. Reshaping financing and investment models 5. Investing in preparedness. Success requires committed leadership from host governments, as well as coordinated engagement and sustained support from humanitarian organizations and development partners.
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    Using Poverty Lines to Measure Refugee Self-Reliance
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-30) Hoogeveen, Johannes; Hopper, Robert
    Humanitarian models of refugee assistance increasingly promote refugee self-reliance without offering a clear understanding of what constitutes self-reliance, or how to measure it, although measurement is essential to assess whether the promotion of self-reliance has been successful. This paper proposes an approach to measuring self-reliance rooted in global poverty measurement: a refugee is self-reliant if their self-earned income exceeds the locally relevant poverty line. In its empirical application, the paper uses estimates of self-reliance drawn from 11 consumption surveys, which present the universe of data that can be used for such purposes. Refugees in middle-income countries are found to be far more likely to be self-reliant than those in lower income countries, while refugees residing in urban and non-camp settings demonstrate higher levels of self-reliance than those in rural and camp environments, reflecting the presence of greater economic opportunities outside camps and in urban areas. The paper also finds evidence that aid and self-reliance are inversely correlated, with more aid spent in environments where refugee self-reliance is constrained. The paper argues that a different outcome should be envisaged, one in which governments that encourage refugees to be self-reliant receive more aid. Such an approach would be beneficial for refugees, who would gain financial autonomy, and for host country citizens, who often face high levels of poverty and at times are even poorer than refugees.
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    Refugee Education Financing: Key Facts and Findings — Insights into the Financing of Refugee Education in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-11) Hopper, Robert
    This paper, along with its accompanying data, provides the first comprehensive analysis on financing for refugee education in low- and middle-income countries. By compiling and scrutinizing data on host government financing, foreign aid contributions, and philanthropic giving, a consolidated and quantified overview of all major sources of financing for refugee education in low- and middle-income countries is produced. This data is then analyzed to reveal key trends and patterns in refugee education financing, existing financing gaps, and potential biases in financing allocations. These findings are explored in the 10 facts and findings outlined in this paper, and summarized in Box 1 below. It is hoped that this dataset and analysis will help to improve the understanding of financing for refugee education in low- and middle-income countries and inform future discussion and debate on refugee education financing.