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 lack of sanitation access in the community is a significant risk factor for anaemia and child growth stunting, but not for incidence of diarrhoea... Read more...
Should the Community-Based Management (CBM) model remain a central development strategy? Whay we need to know about water point functionality as it... Read more...
Ministers of Finance should increase funding for the enabling environment, make more use of micro and blended finance, and address the inequities in... Read more...
Spreading the cost of faecal waste removal over a series of monthly payments could make it more affordable for poor households and help kick start... Read more...
This publication has been produced by IRC as part of its independent monitoring and knowledge management services to the ONEWASH Plus programme. The... Read more...
Handwashing after contact with excreta is poorly practised globally, despite the likely positive health benefits. Read more...
An information guide to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in schools, health care facilities, the workplace, orphanages, prisons, refugee... Read more...
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) need to be better integrated into government systems that will endure post-implementation. Further, there is a... Read more...
The Toolkit aims to assist anyone involved or planning to work in school hygiene, sanitation, and water. It describes basic principles, strategies... Read more...
Data was collected on household income, diarrhoeal disease occurrence, water service provision, and sanitation and hygiene services and practices at... 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...
Factors influencing and inhibiting the success of reporting, processing and acting on the results of data. Read more...
Decision-support tool to aid the identification of potentially appropriate drinking water methods for arsenic- and salt-mitigation in Bangladesh... Read more...
The costs of a pilot small-scale container-based sanitation service (CBS) were higher than those of large-scale waterborne sewerage, but economies of... 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...
Excreta disposal issues, urban sanitation, weak community participation, hygiene promotion design, sustainability and the emergency development... 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...