Rural water economics are different - and incredibly challenging. Can serving rural customers in Africa possibly be a commercially viable proposition? A bold new arrangement in Benin will help answer this question. In this second full episode of the REAL-Water podcast, we speak with Thierry Barbotte and Mikael Dupuis of UDUMA, a subsidiary of France's Odial Solutions and sister company to Vergnet Hydro. UDUMA has been providing rural water supply services under government contracts in Burkina Faso and Mali for several years, and has just been awarded two out of three regional concessions to operate and maintain water supply systems for Benin's rural population - representing a combined service area with on the order 6 million people. A regional rural water system operating contract of this scale is largely unprecedented. We talk with Thierry and Mikael about how this public-private partnership came into being and why they are convinced it will be successful.