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.
Stef Smits' in-depth review of the JMP 2021 data on the progress made in 15 countries and discussing the implications towards 2030. Read more...
A novel Empowerment in WASH Index is presented, which was piloted in Banfora, Burkina Faso. Findings show importance of household- and community-... Read more...
More emphasis is needed on building and strengthening the work of multi-stakeholder platforms in WASH at the national level. Read more...
The Multi-country synthesis report brings together the insights from the 13 Triple-S country studies to identify trends in rural water supply,... Read more...
Recommendations to accelerate progress towards achieving Open Defecation Free (ODF) status by 2030 and the progress made up to January 2021. Read more...
The status of WASH at national and municipal levels and how IRC and a coalition of partners are working together with Government to inspire and... Read more...
Government should facilitate participation of users in decisions on water and sanitation; development partners should support the government in... 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...
It would be easy, and wrong, to say that global conferences rarely deliver results, for sometimes they offer brand new ways of seeing things. Read more...
Could lack of definition be undermining the impact of effective but costly support? Read more...