Global Water Operators' Partnerships Alliance

What are mentors' motivations for WOPs?

GWOPA played a role of leading coordinator for the "Workshop: WOPs and Economical spin off belong together!" which took place on the 2nd of November at the World WaterNet office in Amsterdam.  This workshop was organized at the "Water Operators’ Partnerships” Conference - Each one teach one", one of major events of the International Water Week Amsterdam .

If incentives in engaging in WOPs are obvious for recipient utilities, mentors’ motivations may be less explicit. This session aimed at discussing the mutual benefits for utilities engaged in WOPs, and how WOPs can generate economical spin-off for both sides. The session gathered a diverse assortment of water and sanitation operators, from private operators from the South, to public operators both from the North and from the South. Interesting enough, the discussion revealed that all mentors, regardless of their status, shared several common motivations for their involvement.

The most cited driver was the principle of solidarity, the moral obligation to help developing countries to reach the MDGs. Other operators expressed this in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility of utilities. While WOPs cannot do it all, mentors felt that they could at least contribute a big part of the solution.

Goodwill is helped along when there is an enabling institutional framework to support it. Policies on international cooperation, as well as dedicated funding mechanisms such as exist in the Netherlands and in France allowing operators like Vitens, WaterNet and SIAAP to devote up to 1% of their turn-over to international solidarity, make it much more possible for utilities to extend their know-how through WOPs.

Without such facilitating funds, extending support is complicated. Though Senegelaise des Eaux, a champion utility that regularly welcomes contingents of African professionals to its outstanding facilities, shares the goal of helping raise the capacity of its African peers, mobilizing appropriate and sufficient funding to do so remains a challenge, SDE’s director pointed out.

Morroco’s Office National de l’Eau Potable presented a further perspective. Having received extensive support from northern operators in the past, it now considers it its duty, to in turn extend help to its counterparts from the South. It is particularly concerned about universalizing access to sanitation services in Africa. Having achieved 91% water coverage and an excellent sanitation coverage it attributes to WOPs coupled with very ambitious investment programs, the utility now strives to prove that the same thing is achievable in most African countries and offers its help in taking on this challenge.

The second major incentive is related to mentors’ staff motivation. Professionals involved in WOPs develop their own skills and competencies - like creativeness and flexibility - by working with people from different cultural backgrounds.  On top of the excitement of travel and encounters with people from other continents, when staff they feel they can make a difference, their motivation is boosted. The effective goes beyond the benefits for the individual utility, but raises the attractiveness of the sector as a whole, drawing young talented professionals and retaining them.

Mentors also recognized that the institutional capacity of their utility as a whole was strengthened by their involvement in peer exchanges. Much of what was learned through mentoring one utility can be readily applied in a subsequent exchange.

Finally, if the economic spin-off was not mentioned as a major incentive for operators themselves, it was acknowledged that WOPS could trigger positive commercial exchanges, for example, in terms of equipment and technologies that may later be sold on to the mentee utilities. While the panelists agreed that this is not, and should not, be the primary incentive of international cooperation, the prospect may nevertheless help garner support at the national political level to mobilize more funding for the water sector aid.

In conclusion, the participants emphasized the necessity of documenting WOPs more closely, in order to show their positive impacts at all levels, and convince governments and donors to invest in this promising and growing initiative.

Chair: Faraj El-Awar, GWOPA Program Manager
Panelists: Nabil Mosleh, ONEP, Morocco; Gerard Rundberg, Word Waternet, the Netherlands; Adriaan Mels, Vitens-Evides, the Netherlands; Aladji Dieng, Senegalaise Des Eux, Senegal and Daniel Markovitch Syndicat Interdepartemental pour l’Assainissement de l’Agglomeration Parisienne, France