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.
A contextual assessment of GESI in the WASH sector based on a review of national policies, strategies, and implementation practices in Ethiopia. Read more...
Lessons learned and relevance for global and regional civil society organisation (CSO) networks active in the WASH sector. Read more...
The transition from water trucking towards sustainable, utility-led water service models for long-term refugee populations. Read more...
This study confirms the high relevance of payment modalities that reduce the barrier of the upfront payment to get access to a water supply service... Read more...
The SMART market-based approach is contributing to SDG 6 and beyond. Its impact is significant, but localised. Read more...
Testing approaches to strengthen the sustainability and performance of WASH service delivery systems. Read more...
Measuring change over time in the relationships and network structure of learning alliances in four separate Ethiopian locations in USAID's... 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...
This report summarizes the findings of action research on how different actors in the Transform WASH project create demand for sanitation products... Read more...
An in-depth inclusive analysis on country-level accountability mechanisms towards Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) on clean water and... Read more...
Excreta disposal issues, urban sanitation, weak community participation, hygiene promotion design, sustainability and the emergency development... Read more...
A report on a project that studied the effects of changing rainfall and land use on catchment hydrology and groundwater, the factors that control the... Read more...
The paper describes the importance of school sanitation in 8 steps. In the global context it reminds us of the 2.3 billion people still without... Read more...