TOR079: Akvo with Jeroen van der Sommen

Jeroen van der Sommen is the director and co-founder of Akvo, an organization that builds open source internet and mobile software which is used to make international development cooperation and aid activity more effective and transparent.

Jeroen helped to ignite the Akvo phenomenon after the Stockholm World Water Week in summer 2006 and has steered Akvo’s evolution to ensure it is relevant to, and supported by, a wide range of implementation NGOs, funding partners and global institutions. He started his career as a geologist, working throughout the 1980s in countries such as Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Niger, Mali, Indonesia and India, managing water supply and management projects on behalf of organizations such as the World Bank and the European Union. In 1998, Jeroen founded the Netherlands Water Partnership, where he built a dynamic network of over 200 member organizations that collaborate.