Cross-cutting pillar
Collective facilities and essential services
A borehole out of order, a street lamp switched off, a stadium with no manager: the problem is not construction, it is operation.
What the territory lives
A borehole has been waiting for a part for months. The street lamps that were inaugurated no longer light up. The stadium has no manager. The cultural centre is closed. The money was spent, the facility serves no one.
What doing nothing costs
- A territory does not keep its youth with jobs alone: it also needs water, electricity, lit streets, a place to play, a place to create.
- A facility that stops produces neither service, nor revenue, nor trust.
- Without an operating model, maintenance falls on a budget that does not exist.
Our response
ODT’s doctrine is that of the living facility: no facility is financed without a designated operator, identified revenue and secured maintenance. This pillar runs through the other six: it supplies water and energy to processing units, carries environmental health, hosts training, is steered by data, stays low-carbon and creates jobs for young people.
What you get
- A geolocated inventory of facilities and their working condition
- A master plan for facilities and essential services
- A public lighting master plan
- Reconfiguration audits for facilities that have stopped
- Agreements and operating models
- Project management and technical clearances
- An operating dashboard in the observatory
Central Africa context
Drinking water and sanitation
Water conditions agri-food processing, slaughter, market gardening and market hygiene. It also frees the time that women and girls spend fetching water. Operation is entrusted to a local operator or a professionalised users’ association; a social tariff protects vulnerable households. ODT coordinates and designs. It does not replace the sector authorities, whose responsibilities remain their own.
- Solar-powered boreholes, multi-village mini water supplies, standpipes with mobile payment
- Sanitary blocks for markets, bus stations and schools, faecal sludge management
- Remote monitoring of flows and breakdowns; water quality control integrated into the One Health observatory
Energy
Hybrid solar mini-grids are sized first on productive uses (mills, cold storage, welding, drying, workshops), which secure their profitability. The framework is that of the rural electrification plans and the sector regulator. ODT plans, studies, builds files and supervises; operation falls to a licensed operator. ODT coordinates and designs. It does not replace the sector authorities, whose responsibilities remain their own.
- Solarisation of public buildings: town hall, health centres, schools, academies
- Individual solar kits on pay-as-you-go for off-grid households
- Biogas from abattoirs and markets, improved cookstoves
Public lighting
Public lighting is the facility that returns the most for what it costs: it lengthens the economic day (evening markets, trade, catering), improves safety, particularly for women and girls, and makes communal action visible. Without planned maintenance, it goes out a few months after the inauguration.
- Inventory of every light point and a hierarchical master plan: commercial axes, markets, bus stations, schools, health centres, neighbourhoods
- Stand-alone solar LED street lamps where the grid is absent or unstable; grid-connected, remotely managed LEDs elsewhere
- Energy performance contract or public-private partnership; failing that, a compulsory maintenance budget line fed by new revenue
- Communal maintenance brigades, trained by the academy: electricians, solar technicians
Sports facilities
Lit multi-sport courts, synthetic turf pitches, refurbished stadiums, fitness trails, multipurpose halls. Sport creates activities (schools and academies, championships, rentals, events), jobs for coaches and managers, and joins One Health through sport and health.
- Management agreement with a sports association or a local business
- Occupancy calendar shared between schools, clubs and the public
- Upkeep of surfacing and lighting provisioned from the time of investment
Culture and creative industries
Multifunction cultural centres and third places: performance hall, digital media library, recording and video studio, coworking, fabrication workshop, craft exhibition space. Music, audiovisual, fashion, design and fine crafts employ many young people with little capital.
- Heritage to be developed: chiefdoms, natural sites, know-how, festivals and craft markets
- Operation through annual programming, rental, ticketing and training
- Pooling with the incubator and the online training platform; no telecoms or foundation partnership has been signed to date
Other revenue-generating facilities
Modern markets, bus stations, parking areas, abattoirs, cold stores, youth centres: they are both services and sources of communal revenue. Their design integrates water, sanitation, solar, lighting, accessibility and waste management.
Who operates it?
Who operates it?
Principle: operator, revenue and maintenance are secured before any investment.
For each facility, the question is asked before the investment, not at the inauguration. The operator signs an agreement and its team is trained before the works are handed over. The table below gives the typical operator, by way of illustration.
- Operating agreement signed before handover of the works
- Operating revenue identified, covering at least running costs
- Maintenance provision entered in the operating plan before any disbursement
- Working condition, usage and revenue reported to the observatory and published
Related situations
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