Stef Smits is a senior programme officer and Co-director of IRC's Growth Hub. He has 20 years of professional experience in water supply and sanitation in over 25 countries in Europe, Latin America, Southern Africa, and South Asia. His main thematic expertise includes: institutional models for water supply, sustainability and enabling environment, monitoring, costing and financing of services and integrated water resources management.
Stef has led numerous projects on these topics, and published about them. In addition, he has ample management expertise: from consultancy assignments to multi-annual programmes, and units within an organisation. He has worked for a range of clients including bilateral donors, development banks, research funders and NGOs. Stef holds an MSc degree in Irrigation and Water Engineering from Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Driven amongst others by the mobile phone applications, more and more statistics are becoming available on the state of water services. These go well beyond the coverage data we were used to in the JMP reports (and which this year gave us some reason to be mildly optimistic). The new stats provide... Read more...
One of the key premises behind community-based management is that users pay for the operation and maintenance costs. On this blog we have reported at various occasions about the non-payment of major repairs. But some of the data presented this recently, show that even payment of minor O&M costs... Read more...
Last week, we had our first Triple-S research seminar, discussing the first findings from the assessments of service provision around point sources in Ghana and Uganda. Read more...
As argued several times, post-construction support is one of the keys to sustainability of rural water supplies. Read more...
Just as Orpheus descended into the underworld to bring his wife Eurydice back to life, the water sector invests heavily in bringing broken-down water supply systems back into function; often to find those same systems slipping back into disuse, as soon as the engineers turn their head to look away... Read more...
José Miguel is a circuit rider: a technician responsible for providing technical assistance to a number of water committees in his area around San Vicente in El Salvador. There are around 30 water systems on his circuit which he visits regularly. Read more...
The lack of clearly delineated roles can undermine sustainable services at scale. Read more...
Behavioural change needs to happen at both user level and service provider level if water services are to remain sustainable. The Triple-S project promoted the need for rigorous learning processes for all water stakeholders in order to ensure services that last.
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