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.
I have written before about our work on life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) in Honduras. The idea is to look into the real costs of investment programmes and projects in Honduras, so see which intervention model is the most cost-effective. Read more...
Just as Orpheus descended into the underworld to bring his wife Eurydice back to life, the water sector invests heavily in bringing broken-down water supply systems back into function; often to find those same systems slipping back into disuse, as soon as the engineers turn their head to look away... Read more...
Could lack of definition be undermining the impact of effective but costly support? Read more...
Water For People adopted the "Everyone, Forever" approach. IRC carried out a case study to learn lessons on scaling-up rural water and sanitation services. Read more...
“ We just take the programmes as they fall upon us, with their conditions. One donor uses a per capita threshold of 150 US$/capita and wants us to follow one approach, and we will do that. Another uses a threshold of 250 US$/day, but with another approach, and a different degree of community... Read more...
Chinda is a small rural municipality, of some 5000 people, spread out over 15 hamlets in Western Honduras. This week I had the opportunity to carry out a case study of the work of the NGO Water For People (WFP) in this municipality. Read more...
Cities in Latin America face a double challenge in environmental sanitation, of both providing access to basic water supply and sanitation for those currently lacking that, and improving the collection and treatment of wastewater and solid waste. Governance is a crucial factor affecting the way in... Read more...
Honduras is well on track towards meeting the MDGs for sanitation as coverage is expanding rapidly. However, these statistics do not reflect the sustainability or the use of such facilities, as many of these are in poor condition or are not used at all. In addition, there is a large negative impact... Read more...
This case study is based on a field evaluation of water supply systems conducted in February 1996 in the departments of Francisco Morazan, La Paz,... Read more...