On 5 October 2026, Enabel — the Belgian federal agency for international development cooperation — and Odoo signed a five-year partnership agreement to progressively deploy the Belgian ERP across all of Enabel’s operations (Enabel, 5 October 2026). The agreement, concluded at the end of a public procurement process, was signed by Jean Van Wetter, Director General of Enabel, and Fabien Pinckaers, founder and CEO of Odoo. It covers five functional areas: human resources, finance, project management, procurement, and logistics.
Background
Enabel is the Belgian federal agency responsible for implementing development cooperation. Its teams manage projects in several dozen countries, primarily in Africa and Asia, handling complex financial, HR, and project workflows spread across multiple continents. These processes are currently handled by separate, disconnected applications with no central integration layer. Addressing this fragmentation is precisely the mandate Odoo has been given.
Odoo, founded in 2004 in Louvain-la-Neuve, is present in 190 countries with 28 million users, a network of 23,000 partners, and around 8,000 employees — more than 1,700 of them based in Belgium (Enabel, 5 October 2026). Its revenue is estimated at €900 million in 2026, with a target of €1 billion by 2027 (Enabel, 5 October 2026). The fact that Enabel selected Odoo through a competitive public tender — rather than a direct contract — adds significant weight to the reference.
What This Means for Organisations
For CIOs and CFOs of international NGOs, public agencies, and development organisations, this deal is a maturity signal. A government agency managing multi-country, multi-currency projects has chosen Odoo through an open public procurement process — competing against the likes of SAP and Microsoft Dynamics — and validated its capacity to meet strict governance requirements. This is a reference that procurement teams across the public and non-profit sectors will be able to cite in future vendor selection processes.
The African dimension of the agreement also deserves attention. Odoo has announced plans to leverage its deployment at Enabel to support local businesses in their transition towards the formal economy, providing accessible tools adapted to low-connectivity environments (Odoo, 5 October 2026). For ERP integrators operating in Sub-Saharan Africa, this is a clear strategic positioning signal: Odoo is investing in the field, not just the narrative.
For procurement and finance teams in European public institutions and local authorities: Enabel’s selection of Odoo via public tender simplifies the business case for other public bodies looking to choose an open-source ERP over proprietary incumbents. The reference is now documented and publicly accessible.
What to Watch
The deployment timeline remains open: Enabel refers to “the coming months” for the start of the phased rollout, with no public milestones disclosed. The real value of this agreement will be measured by the actual level of application consolidation achieved — how many existing tools are retired, by when, and with what level of satisfaction among field teams. The operational challenge is real: deploying a unified ERP across multi-country, multi-language contexts — sometimes with limited bandwidth — is fundamentally different from a deployment in a stable single-office environment. Following this rollout will provide a useful case study for any public organisation considering a similar digital transformation.
Related Articles
To go further, read our Odoo vs SAP vs NetSuite comparison for a full breakdown of Odoo’s strengths against proprietary ERP platforms, our complete guide to choosing an ERP system to understand the criteria that matter most in public procurement, and our article on mandatory PEPPOL e-invoicing in Belgium for the regulatory context surrounding this agreement.
