Highlights

IRC WASH, together with Water for People and Water for Good hosted the All Systems Connect 2023 symposium in The Hague.

The MetaMeta / SMART Centre Group, together with Tiyeni and IWMI contributed through a session titled: ‘Scaling self-supply in Africa’. This session evaluated lessons learnt, among others from an IRC evaluation, about supported self-supply as an successful scaling approach to reach SDG6.1 in rural Africa at a cost that is 2-6 times lower than conventional WASH delivery models and simultaneously contributes to SDGs for poverty, food security, gender and climate.

There was a good turn-out and an interactive discussion, following the presentations by Barbara van Koppen (IWMI), Colin Andrews (Tiyeni) and Henk Holtslag (MetaMeta / SMART Centre Group). Lemessa Mekonte of IRC moderated the session together with Aline Saraiva of RWSN.

The presentations of the session and posters presented can be accessed through the Resource Page and after the ‘read more’.

The SMART Centre Group is facilitating two virtual side events around the UN Water Conference, which will take place in NEw York from 22 – 24 March 2023.

‘2 with 8’ initiative on HWTS

The first virtual side-event will take place on Tuesday 21st March, 09.00AM (EST) and will focus on the recently launched ‘2 with 8’ initiative on HWTS to work towards ‘Safe drinking water for 2 billion people with $8 billion’. During the event there will be presentations from WHO, CAWST, Danone, Navaza, John Cherry and others.

Check the event page and the background document for more info and registration.

Supporting Self-supply

The second virtual side-event will take place on Thursday 23rd March, 09.00AM (EST) and will focus on the huge impact of self-supply in Asia and shares experience how supported self-supply can reach SDG6.1 and increases food security in rural Africa at a 1 time grant of $25 per person. During the event there will be presentations from RWSN, The Groundwater Project, Tiyeni and MetaMeta/SMART Centre Group as well as a moderated discussion with panel and participants.

Check the event page and the background document for more info and registration.

The training was organized and funded by Rotarian Chris Roesel. The trainers were Brighton Kaniki from Malawi and Data Samuel from South Sudan.

During the training there were several challenges but the 10 people (5 men, 5 women) trained managed to, together, drill one new tubewell and install 2 pumps.

The training can be a start of cooperation between Rotary and SMART Centre Group and presence in Uganda.

The MetaMeta – SMART Centre Group makes a commitment to the Water Action Agenda as part of the UN Water conference in New York in March 2023. The commitment with the title ‘Reaching SDG6.1 in rural Africa at a cost of $25/ person with the SMART approach; through training the local private sector and supporting self-supply’ is based on the 3-pager ‘Supporting self-supply’ which can be found here.

Together with the Groundwater Project and Tiyeni, the MetaMeta – SMART Centre Group advocates for this approach, as a contribution to reaching the SDG6.1 target by 2030.

On behalf of the SMART Centre Group, Henk Holtslag and Reinier Veldman attended the Groundwater Summit at UNESCO, Paris, which was held from 6 – 8 December 2022.

As part of the first day of the event, we presented on: ‘Self-supply: unlocking the potential of household investment’, in a side-event session jointly organised with Ask for Water GmbH, University of Technology Sydney, RWSN/SKAT and BaseFlow.

The presentations and recording are available on the resource page.

The event and our contribution was mentioned in an article on the Dutch Water Sector website.

Highlights of the summit can be watched below.

Recently we participated in the WASH Debate on 9 November 2022, organised by IRC WASH. The WASH Debate discussed the theme ‘Levering Household investments, Experiences in scaling market-based approached in water and sanitation.

As part of the Debate, Kerstin Danert presented on the outcomes of the recent assessment of the SMART Approach by IRC WASH (click here for the report).

The full recording of the session is available on youtube.

The presentation of the SMART approach starts at 15.02. The presentation is available here.

The panel discussion starts from 55:22

The “All Systems go Africa” conference took place in Accra from 19 to 21 October, 2022 (https://www.ircwash.org/all-systems-go-africa).

Over 260 people almost all from African countries discussed challenges and promising initiatives to reach SDG6.

For the MetaMeta SMART Centre Group Henk Holtslag presented on the topic “Service delivery models” with a presentation;  Subsidized Self-supply/ farm wells, A promising service model to reach SDG6.1 in rural Africa. The example of Zambia.

His proposition: “To reach SDG6.1 in rural Sub Saharan Africa it is more cost-effective to subsidize farm wells that serve 50 people than subsidize communal wells that serve of 250 people” created much discussion and even the observation that we should not go back to family wells but go forward to piped systems.

Look at the presentation and read the document… and share your thoughts with us!

IRC regularly organises ‘WASH Debates’ as an event to provide an informal platform for Dutch organisations and professionals working in the international water sector to connect and to discuss the latest developments and trends in the sector.

The next WASH Debate will take place on November 9th and will focus on ‘Leveraging household investments: Experiences in scaling market-based approaches in water and sanitation’.

The upcoming WASH Debate will look at the role of Market-Based solutions in increasing the coverage with Sanitation and why this is less accepted in relation to water-supply.

As part of the event, the recent assessment of the SMART Approach will be discussed.

More info is available on the website of IRC.

The details of the event are:

Date: Wednesday 9 November
Time: 17:00-18:30 CET, followed by drinks
Location: Dudok, The Hague
Format: In-person event with possibility to follow online*