I am Georges YOTTO, IT-coordinator at Toucountouna town hall. My work is mainly focused on supplying electricity, IT-services and training of the staff. 

In our country, Benin, many regions do not have access to electricity, yet.

The town hall used the national network, fueled by generators to provide the municipality with electricity. But the frequent outages did a lot of damage to computer devices and did not allow activities to run smoothly. The town hall has therefore installed a solar power plant since 2016.

I am particularly proud to be part of the first city hall that uses 100% solar energy in Benin.

I am particularly proud to be part of the first town hall that runs on 100% solar energy in Benin.
In the same year, the research on data processing showed that 14 municipal officials did not know how to start a computer. We organized various IT training courses for employees. Currently, the entire municipal administration knows how to use a computer. The 'office package' is now used on a daily basis. 

We have considerably strengthened the IT infrastructure with new computers, printers and scanners that were purchased thanks to the support of the city of Merelbeke ( Belgium).

We also set up an intranet for sharing files, printers and document archives.

Quality internet acces, however, remains difficult (!!).

The civil registry suffered from the poor custody of birth certificates. Now that we have purchased the software, we already digitized 40,000 birth certificates. The software is now also installed at the various city offices. With this initiative, population groups can quickly have their civil status documents at the level of the city posts (small offices on the outskirts of the city).

We have purchased tax and land registry software for good income management.

The vision to turn the municipality of Toucountouna into a case study is gradually becoming visible.