A SEN’EAU–SUEZ delegation visits the OiEau Training Centre
Since 2020, SEN’EAU, in which SUEZ is a shareholder and key technical partner, has been responsible for water production and distribution in urban and peri-urban areas of Senegal.
Due to rapid population and urban growth (5-6% per year), meeting water demand and providing a high-quality service is a daily challenge for the water sector in Senegal. Significant investments have been made in recent years by the concessionaire SONES and the Senegalese Ministry of Water and Sanitation.
SEN'EAU operates all of these facilities. The company has successfully met the challenge of supplying drinking water to its customers by digitising its processes, optimising processes and facility management, and providing daily preventive and corrective maintenance. Numerous innovations have been implemented with the leading technical partner SUEZ (digitisation of customer relations, AI-assisted plant and network management, improvement of methods and materials).
This transformation of the company's operations is accompanied by a transformation of human resources and a transfer of know-how with technical partner SUEZ. This is why SEN'EAU will inaugurate its Centre of Excellence and Innovation (CEI) in October 2025, which will support the development of its 1,200 employees and, more generally, benefit the entire water sector.
In this context, a delegation composed of SEN'EAU and SUEZ managers visited the OiEau Training Centre in Limoges. Their objective was to gather advice on the effective implementation of the CEI, its organisation and the tools necessary for its proper management.
The 1,200 employees of SEN'EAU will initially form the basis for these training courses; it is then planned to open the Centre to players in the water sector in general in Senegal, in particular companies such as the Société Nationale des Eaux du Sénégal (SONES), which manages the infrastructure, with its 300-350 employees, and the Office National d'Assainissement (ONAS). Ultimately, the Centre will be open to all stakeholders in the water sector. The Centre will be officially inaugurated in October 2025, but it is already operational: during the first half of the year, we provided 25,000 hours of training.
The CEI is housed in brand new buildings, with multi-purpose classrooms, technical training rooms and teaching platforms (electromechanics, plumbing, etc.). Our training courses also cover areas such as customer service, purchasing and logistics, meaning that all stakeholders in the water chain can be trained.
Historically, SUEZ and OiEau have maintained close ties, as SUEZ sits on the Executive Committee and is also a member of the OiEau Board of Directors. It was therefore quite natural for us to turn to OiEau to benefit from their long experience in organising and managing vocational training centres in the water sector. This makes all the more sense given that OiEau is a recognised training provider in Africa, with operations in some 20 countries, including Senegal.
In France and internationally, SUEZ positions itself as a strategic partner in providing essential services to populations. In 2024, SUEZ supplied drinking water to 68 million people worldwide and sanitation services to 44 million people.
With a presence on several continents, particularly in Africa, SUEZ is continuing its international growth by securing contracts that aim not only to preserve resources and improve the service provided to users, but also to strengthen the skills of water service management teams.
This last point is a key element of our offerings. We offer our clients know-how transfer programmes using the WIKTI methodology developed by SUEZ, which assesses individual and collective skills in each business segment and proposes tailored, scalable training plans. These training plans will primarily involve our internal SUEZ training experts, but also trainers from other organisations such as OiEau, for their complementary expertise.
We are open to continuing this positive dynamic of collaboration with OiEau on training and knowledge transfer, which are crucial elements for the success of our projects.
For 40 years, OiEau has been supporting professionals (public and private operators, managers, elected officials, manufacturers, institutional actors, water and health agencies, etc.) in the process of improving and acquiring knowledge and expertise for their teams, for efficient and sustainable management of the small and large water cycle.
The development of skills and knowledge, as well as the sharing of innovative solutions at all levels (in France, Europe and worldwide), are at the heart of OiEau's comprehensive training programme (face-to-face or e-learning) and educational engineering.