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.
Policy recommendations are given for five building blocks: institutional capacity, financing, asset management, water resources management, and... Read more...
Informing the Community Water and Sanitation Agency's change journey into the national utility for rural service provision. Read more...
Presentations from the WASH Learning theme 1 - Delivering Safe WASH Services session of the All Systems Connect International Symposium 2023. Read more...
The SMART market-based approach is contributing to SDG 6 and beyond. Its impact is significant, but localised. Read more...
This tool provides guidance on a systematic approach to experimenting with innovative solutions to water problems. Read more...
For Ghana the main recommendations were to revisit the Service Delivery Approach (SDA) , introduce more robust monitoring, increase sector funding... Read more...
Triple-S has successfully promoted sustainability and the Service Delivery Approach (SDA) at the international level and in target countries. The... Read more...
Last week it was World Water Day 2014 , with the topic of "water and energy". I see obvious issues coming by on the water-energy nexus (which by the way is one of those development sector buzz words that I start disliking more every day. I hope the next buzz word is a bit more, uh, sparkling), such... Read more...
Territorial approaches to rural water supply were a hot topic at this week's Triple-S annual meeting. Read more...
Two weeks ago, the “management and support” working group of the RWSN had its first meeting. This meeting focused specifically on management models and support arrangements for piped water supply in small towns. Read more...
I have argued at times for the need for post-construction support to rural water supply, and so have various publications from IRC and others over the past decade. However, there has been critique to this, stating that there is little evidence that shows that such help helps improving rural water... Read more...
Could lack of definition be undermining the impact of effective but costly support? Read more...
If it is possible to move in a few years from an iPod to an iPhone or and iPad, why are we in the water sector still struggling with the handpump? When can we expect the iPump 2.0? Did Steve Jobs die too early to invent this? As the naked truth about poor levels of functionality of hand pumps... Read more...
The latest trend in Dutch politics is to label anything of parties of another political colour as hobbyism. Read more...