2019, a pivotal year…

In 2019, ODIAL SOLUTIONS Group brought access to drinking water to almost 1.7m villagers in sub-Saharan Africa, often under challenging conditions – steeply sloping land in Togo, armed conflict zones in Mali – and in complex situations, such as private connections in Mauritania. Each time, we identified the most suitable models and techniques: manual pumps, solar pumps, small-scale networks or drinking water services.

In 2019, we also saw the work undertaken over the last four years through our UDUMA subsidiary come to fruition: at the end of the year, work began to set up the company’s first drinking water service. In two years’ time, 560,000 villagers in Mali’s Sikasso region will benefit from the service.

We offer a high quality, fair, sustainable, large-scale, replicable service based on technical and societal innovations. In 2019, it continued to garner growing interest among the international community:

• Discussion and working group with researchers from the University of Oxford
• Mentions in works such as those published by the INTERNATIONAL WATER ASSOCIATION and jointly by the AFD (French development agency), CNRS (French centre for scientific research) and FWP (French water partnership)
• Invitations to present the UDUMA model at events such as the Sanitation and Water for All high-level meeting in San José and the ALL SYSTEMS GO! symposium in The Hague
• The 2019 “Most innovative business model” trophy from the International Development Observatory (ODI)

This high level of activity required us to recruit new staff and skills, and reorganise and reposition the group. We were supported in this transformation, and in particular in restructuring our range of products and services, by BPIFRANCE’s SME ACCELERATOR, set up to assist SMEs with high growth potential.

… and a year of strides in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

We have developed our group in an enormous number of ways this year, and each one demonstrates our focus on our social, societal and environmental impact. We have designed and set up technical solutions to bring drinking water to hard-to-reach areas, actively encouraged employees to choose cycling as a form of transport for both their journeys to work and their lunchtime errands, saved more than 1,500 tonnes of CO2 per year thanks to our solar expertise and our conscious preference for solar solutions, and adopted an anti-bribery policy covering all group staff.

ODIAL SOLUTIONS Group joined the United Nations Global Compact on 28 January 2010. The Global Compact brings together businesses, non-profits and United Nations agencies through a commitment to ten universally recognised principles. “These principles offer a framework for organisations that are committed to adopting sustainable practices.” Each year, we renew our commitment to the Global Compact by publishing a new Communication on Progress.

This 2020 Integrated Report serves as both an Annual Report and a Communication on Progress. Not only does it detail our main business activities during 2019, it also highlights the social, environmental and societal impacts they have had. It then goes on to describe our specific CSR initiatives. Our CSR action plan is included as a conclusion to the report.

I hope you will find it interesting and informative.

Thierry BARBOTTE,
Chairman, ODIAL SOLUTIONS

To know more:
2020 Integrated Report