Ready to thrive in a changing world

Progress is real – even if uneven

Despite the rupture, our mission has not stood still. Nearly six billion people now have access to safely managed water – roughly the global population in 2000. While much remains to be done, we are not just keeping pace with population growth; we are outrunning it. Water, sanitation and hygiene is a story of steady, often overlooked progress.

Change in complex public systems cannot be attributed to a single organisation. Our role is to contribute to strengthening the system, in collaboration with others, so that services continue to improve and sustain over time. The strongest evidence of our impact is not a single number, but a pattern of change over time.

For us and many of our partners, while 2025 brought real setbacks the overall pattern held:

• Systems becoming stronger with sustained engagement
• Institutions improving their ability to plan and finance services
• Service levels rising over time as a result

You will find specific stories and examples of that pattern throughout this report, and we will continue to improve our ability to tell the story of this kind of gradual change and progress. We'll celebrate those who are being served and whose lives are becoming more resilient, alongside the strengthened systems that allow this, – while always maintaining our focus on those who are underserved or not served at all.

Partnerships that endure

Partnerships remain central to our mission and our model, particularly our One For All alliance and Destination 2030 strategy. Across our network, we work with governments, technical agencies, financiers and civil society. Looking ahead, these partnerships will be central to a new strategy, defining our ambition, deepening impact, and positioning us as a force for systemic change.

Systems leadership matters more than ever

In an increasingly complex world, the ability to lead across silos is essential. Safe water and sanitation underpin resilience, economic development and healthy lives. We need leaders with the vision to understand this fundamental truth and the political, technical and managerial skills to act.

Our systems leadership essay and course, launched in December, provide an entry point for those seeking to build these skills. Leadership and nation building also underpin the Africa Water & Sanitation Systems Leadership Symposium 2026, in Kigali, Rwanda, in August.

Facing the financial realities

The USAID stop-work orders hit us hard. Nevertheless, our teams delivered a near breakeven result – an achievement we are proud of. With a structurally lower income base in 2026, stabilisation must come before growth. At the same time, we remain convinced we are on the right path and that our transformation will create new opportunities to deliver our mission. We remain grateful to our partners, clients, donors, supervisory board and staff – your trust enables our work.

Transforming tomorrow

The inflection in global development that we opened with presents us with a challenge: not whether to change, but how fast. That rupture is also an opportunity: to rethink resilience and relevance, to localise leadership and decision-making, to focus on high-impact interventions, to diversify funding sources – including domestic – and to build deeper partnerships.

For us, the answer is Riva – a new name for a new, networked model: a federation of independent, locally rooted organisations, each grounded in and accountable to its own context, drawing strength from shared mission and global reach. This is a culmination of more than a decade's work. We will build Riva by converting branch offices into independent national entities – locally-led and nationally registered, united by shared expertise, standards and ambition. Late 2025 saw the registration of a network hub and our first independent members in Ghana and the Netherlands, with Uganda to follow early in 2026.

Our 2025 annual report shows how we're achieving systemic change at scale, driven by systems leaders working at local and national levels and influencing at the highest levels of decision making. Follow the links for more detailed stories on our website. For more information about our country, regional and global programmes and their latest challenges and achievements, see our 2025 Monitoring report and our 2025 Financial Report.

Editor's note: This article was written by IRC CEO, Patrick Moriarty and the Chair of our Supervisory Board, Wambui Gichuri.