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.
The King's speech marks the opening of the Dutch parliamentary year. This year he drew attention to the important position of the Netherlands in the international water sector. The budgets that were presented alongside the speech also reflect this, notably with a 6% increase for the budget for WASH... Read more...
Several Dutch water sector organisations have written to Minister Ploumen (Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation) about the Dutch targets for water supply. Read more...
If you want to take on the real water bucket challenge, donate to government! Read more...
Territorial approaches to rural water supply were a hot topic at this week's Triple-S annual meeting. Read more...
How should WASH-related targets make it into the United Nation's post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals? Read more...
Jacques Dutronc's song sums up how the WASH sector is waking up to the Paris Declaration, cleaning up the mess of often uncoordinated aid efforts. Read more...
Driven amongst others by the mobile phone applications, more and more statistics are becoming available on the state of water services. These go well beyond the coverage data we were used to in the JMP reports (and which this year gave us some reason to be mildly optimistic). The new stats provide... Read more...