ODIAL SOLUTIONS/VEOLIA: Comprehensive drinking water/electricity and urban/rural supply offer

ODIAL SOLUTIONS and VEOLIA launch a comprehensive drinking water and electricity supply offer for people in urban and rural Africa

Picture caption: Thierry BARBOTTE, CEO of the ODIAL SOLUTIONS Group, and Martine VULLIERME, VEOLIA Senior Vice President Africa/Middle East, interviewed at the SIWI SOFA « Supplying urban/rural areas with water and electricity simultaneously » (WORLD WATER WEEK 2017, Stockholm).

URL of the video (25:08).

« Today, we are launching a comprehensive VEOLIA / ODIAL SOLUTIONS drinking water and electricity offer for urban and rural African populations » announced Thierry BARBOTTE, CEO of the ODIAL SOLUTIONS Group (holding of the companies VERGNET HYDRO and UDUMA), at WORLD WATER WEEK 2017 (27 August to 1 September in Stockholm). « Our joint participation in this event is a very clear call to the major international donors [the World Bank, the African Development Bank, etc.] and the water and energy policy makers to support this novel approach » continued Martine VULLIERME, VEOLIA Senior Vice President Africa / Middle East.

As things stand 60 million people in urban areas and 400 million in rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to safe drinking water. And although one person in three in cities has electricity, only one person in six in rural areas does. This imbalance between urban and rural areas in particular results in an unchecked rural exodus, which causes economic, social and health problems. « We want to make donors and governments aware of the principle of equal access to essential services for everyone », said Martine VULLIERME.

To compensate for the urban/rural territorial divide

Prices per litre of water and per kilowatt-hour are naturally higher in rural areas than in urban areas. Unlike an urban project concentrated on one site, a water or electricity supply project covering a rural area is a combination of a number of individual small-scale projects located at a distance from each other. The isolation of rural water and electricity points also makes management and maintenance more costly. They therefore tend to deteriorate more rapidly.

« The new comprehensive VEOLIA / ODIAL SOLUTIONS project is designed to compensate for this territorial divide by promoting water and electricity projects covering both urban and rural areas », explained Thierry BARBOTTE enthusiastically. The combination makes it possible to equalize prices between areas. Although the model requires a small financial effort to be made by the urban areas, it makes the cost of a litre of water and a kilowatt-hour far more accessible for people in rural areas.

VEOLIA and ODIAL SOLUTIONS’ joint program marks the total commitment of the two groups to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the leaders of all the United Nations member states in September 2015. More specifically, it meets the clean water and sanitation goal (SDG 6), the affordable and clean energy goal (SDG 7) and the partnerships for the goals (SDG 17).

In 2016 VEOLIA and ODIAL SOLUTIONS completed a joint project in Niger for 128 small-scale drinking water networks equipped with solar pumps.