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.
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...
On April 20, Ministers of Water and Sanitation from around the world will meet with their Ministers of Finance in Washington D.C. as part of the Sanitation and Water (SWA) for All High Level Meeting. There, they will discuss sector goals and progress, and it goes without saying that the recent... 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...
This week the Joint Monitoring Program of the United Nations announced that the MDG for water supply has been reached, most likely already somewhere in 2010. 5 years ahead of the deadline the percentage of the World’s population without access to safe water supplies has been halved. This is no mean... Read more...
The relationship between multiple use of water and sustainability in service provision is still a thorny issue. Read more...
A question from the floor at a Rockefeller Foundation meeting raised some interesting thoughts about MUS vs MDGs. Read more...
It is the end/start of the year (depending on the moment at which you read this), so time to look at where one stands. The Joint Monitoring Programme of the United Nations has also done that for the state of the nations of the World with respect to drinking water supplies with this* publication... 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...
One of the pillars of the new Dutch development policy is to promote private sector involvement as a motor for economic growth. Read more...
“ We just take the programmes as they fall upon us, with their conditions. One donor uses a per capita threshold of 150 US$/capita and wants us to follow one approach, and we will do that. Another uses a threshold of 250 US$/day, but with another approach, and a different degree of community... 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...
Chinda is a small rural municipality, of some 5000 people, spread out over 15 hamlets in Western Honduras. This week I had the opportunity to carry out a case study of the work of the NGO Water For People (WFP) in this municipality. Read more...
The biggest news this week in the world of water and sanitation was undoubtedly the announcement of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) that it will be investing in the reinvention of the toilet. Read more...
The Guardian the other day posted an article which claimed that water and sanitation projects are not sexy enough and that donors therefore are not willing to invest in them. According to various interviewees in the article, donors prefer to invest in schools or clinics, rather than in "unsexy"... Read more...
The Netherlands is not the first country to spring to mind when the word drought is mentioned. But we are now in the midst of one, as according to meteorologists it has been the driest spring in decades. Read more...
The latest trend in Dutch politics is to label anything of parties of another political colour as hobbyism. Read more...
How long is sustainable? 5 years? 20 years? 100 years? From here to eternity? Read more...