Country Director | IRC Ethiopia
Lemessa Mekonta is the Country Director for IRC WASH Ethiopia based in Addis Ababa.
He has diversified and hands on experiences in different aspects of water resources, water supplies, and sanitation working for government, private businesses and NGOs in various capacities ranging from expert to managerial level. Key areas of his experiences include program strategy development, partnership facilitation and coordination with different actors, project management, provision of trainings on water supplies, study and design for rural and urban water supplies, urban water utility management, water quality monitoring, leading action research including rural water supply operation and maintenance with appropriate technology identification and use, and private service providers engagement.
Lemessa is a hydrogeologist by background with over 23 years' experience in water and sanitation sector.
The theme of World Water Day 2016 - Water and Jobs - focused on how enough and the right quality of water can change workers' lives and livelihoods, and even transform societies and economies. Linked to this theme, the National Self Supply Task Force in collaboration with IRC, MWA, JICA, Water for... Read more...
The SMART market-based approach is contributing to SDG 6 and beyond. Its impact is significant, but localised. Read more...
How do Sustainable Land Management programmes relate to interventions promoting groundwater utilisation, and how can the benefits of groundwater... Read more...
Investigating the effectiveness of improved well head protection and the uptake and safe installation of improved lifting devices to minimise water... Read more...
Whether you live in the countryside or city in Ethiopia, your water may be unsafe to drink. Household water treatment is one way we can improve its quality. Read more...
The report provides specific recommendations for woreda-level planning of Self-supply acceleration activities, market and business development, and... Read more...
My Water, My Business 2016 is an exhibition and seminar focused on Self-supply and linked to World Water Day 2016. The ambitious aim this year is to bring together different approaches to household-level provision, so going beyond domestic water supply to include household irrigation, water... Read more...
While implementation of the Self-supply approach in Ethiopia is not yet proven, t he expectations placed on this service model are huge. Nevertheless... Read more...
From 7-9 September 2015, IRC, the Millennium Water Alliance- Ethiopia Program (MWA-EP) and the Ministry of Water Irrigation and Energy (MoWIE) facilitated a national learning retreat on Self-supply. Participants came together in Butajira: a small town in Meskan in the Southern Nations,... Read more...
Poster presented at the 2015 UNC water and health conference. Read more...
In Ethiopia, the Self-supply approach for rural water supply is expected to fill gaps left by other service delivery models including community water... Read more...
32 professionals and teams from five woredas in Amhara recently came together for a training workshop on Self-supply acceleration. What did we learn? Read more...
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is one of the well-known international NGOs in Ethiopia, so it was a pleasure for me to see so many CRS advisers in Addis Ababa for their WASH Community of Practice meeting on 23rd May. Staff participated from across East Africa. I was there to share my experiences on... Read more...
A MUStRAIN case study looking at how family wells can be upgraded and improved. Read more...
This report on Self-supply aims to help fill some of the gaps in our knowledge about the existing performance of traditional wells, especially water... Read more...