Akvo annual reports

Annual report 2010 | Annual report 2009 | Annual report 2008

Akvo 2010 Annual Report.

Introduction

2010 will be remembered as the moment when we all realised that the Internet meant you couldn’t hide the past for long. Despite the arguments around about the right and wrongs of Wikileaks, it leaves everyone clear on one thing – over time a fuller story will emerge online.

Taking control of your story is what Akvo is about. For years, decades, centuries even, the people working on infrastructure and other development projects in the poorest parts of the world have been hidden from view by their paymasters. When money has been spent on things that obviously don’t work, it’s been hard for them to stand up and be counted. When things go wrong, they’ve been too scared to say so, because it may jeopardise future funding – or worse.

Akvo is entering a market that contains a lot of historical baggage. International development aid, infrastructure improvement for the poor, philanthropy – there is much to learn from the past. Even success stories like Live Aid face scrutiny – 2010 was the year that Bob Geldof was forced to defend his work in the late 1980s, amid accusations that money meant to tackle famine may have been diverted to buy arms.

In 2010 Akvo went from being an internet project reliant on startup finance to a services business paid to operate systems on behalf of major development aid consortia. In November we secured two five year agreements with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs that will see almost €100 million of development aid projects go online using the Akvo system between now and 2015. All of the partners involved in funding, supporting and implementing projects will use Akvo to share progress online openly, using the internet and mobile phones.

This was the year, too, that Akvo stepped beyond its core market of water and sanitation projects to embrace new development categories. Many of our partners work to fix water and sanitation early in the process of helping a community improve living conditions, with parallel or follow-on projects emerging in areas such as health, education, economic development, agriculture and information and communications technology. We’ve responded to their requests to open up our system to embrace these areas and in November we added a brace of new focus areas.

I’m pleased to say that as we enter 2011 Akvo is on target on the key metrics – project volumes, value, revenues – against the business plan we created back in 2007. Anyone familiar with the computer industry will know how hard that can be. I’d like to thank our early stage funders for having confidence in our team to deliver – and I want to welcome our new customers who we’ll work hard to support in the years to come.

In the end, the good will out and our work is about helping those who do great work share it without having to hire their own PR or software gurus. Describing your work as it happens, simply and authentically, is the best way to respond to this modern world where change seems so bewildering. Many who live in the rich North assume that poverty will always exist as it does today in the South. But some of our grandparents faced grinding poverty even in “developed” countries like the Netherlands, Britain and the United States, with no access to safe water and often no toilet in their own house. Just as that world has been consigned to history, many of the poorest parts of our world today can be transformed in our lifetime. Akvo is part of that change.

As ever, I’m grateful to each of you who has backed us, shared our story or helped us adapt and learn along the way, on this incredible journey.

Jeroen van der Sommen. Chairman of board, Akvo Foundation May 2011

Read the rest in the Akvo annual report for 2010 (PDF 1.5 Mbyte)

Akvo 2009 Annual Report.

Download the Akvo annual report for 2009 (PDF 1.4 Mbyte)

Akvo 2008 Annual Report.

Download the Akvo annual report for 2008 (PDF 1.4 Mbyte)