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.
Increasing repair and maintenance funds leads to higher borehole functionality and water access rates in the drought-prone regions of Turkana, Kenya... Read more...
Guidelines for European national and subnational policy-makers responsible for sustainable financing of small-scale water and sanitation services,... Read more...
As countries, regions and municipalities are making plans to reach universal access to WASH services, a frequently heard question is how much does it actually cost to provide services to everyone in the area? This week's "weekly WASH graph" will provide some magic numbers of the costs of reaching '... Read more...
Based on 20 detailed successful case studies from across India, this book outlines future rural water supply approaches for all lower-income... Read more...
For less than US$12 per person per year a town in Honduras can ensure that everyone's water supply keeps working. Read more...
Two years ago, I posted a blog summarizing discussions on whether insuring rural water supply systems is a good idea. But these remained largely theoretical discussions, as there are few examples of such insurances put in place. During field work for the Community Water Plus project in the State of... Read more...
Based on a review of the costs of 179 water and sanitation projects carried out by FHIS (Honduran Social Investment Fund) over the last five years, we established the unit cost ranges for different intervention models. We also identified the main factors driving the costs of water and sanitation... Read more...
Email requests can sometimes trigger the most interesting thoughts and ideas. Read more...
Navigating the danger zone where countries raise enough money to build but not maintain new infrastructure raises a question: Does this zone exist? Read more...
This includes the structured support activities to service providers as well as to users or user groups. This may be provided in a variety of ways by either local governments directly, by regional utility agencies, specialized agencies or external contractors or a by combination of these modalities. Read more...