A smallholder farmer in
Uganda faces a failed harvest after an unpredictable rainy season.
Across the border in Kenya,
another farmer is experimenting with a climate-resilient practice. In Tanzania,
communities are testing approaches to restore degraded landscapes. In Rwanda,
innovators are using digital tools to solve problems that once seemed
impossible.
So why do we so often look
outside our region for answers to problems that our neighbours are already
solving?
This is the question that
South-South and triangular cooperation should force us to confront.
As we mark the United Nations Day for
South-South Cooperation 2026, under the theme “Solidarity
Rising: Global Alliance for Inclusive and Innovative Development,” we have
an opportunity to rethink development cooperation in East Africa.
The region does not suffer
from a shortage of knowledge, innovation or capable people.
Perhaps we suffer from
insufficient connection between them.
The latest Sustainable Development
Goals Report 2026 makes the urgency clear: with the 2030
deadline approaching, progress remains uneven and accelerated action is needed.
Yet the report also highlights success stories showing how local action,
national policies and partnerships can produce tangible improvements in
people's lives.
That should challenge us to
think differently about how development solutions move.
South-South cooperation
offers a different proposition: countries learning from countries facing
similar realities; institutions sharing expertise; communities exchanging
practical solutions; innovators accessing new markets; and governments
strengthening capacities by learning from experience elsewhere.
Triangular cooperation can
add another dimension—bringing development partners, multilateral institutions,
technology providers or financial resources into partnerships where Southern
countries help define the problem and lead the solution.
For East Africa, this is not
simply about achieving the SDGs. It is also about advancing Africa's own development
agenda.
The African Union's Agenda 2063
provides the continental framework for an integrated, prosperous and peaceful
Africa, driven by its own citizens. It explicitly recognises the importance of
stronger partnerships, regional integration and African-led initiatives.
The AU's 2025 Africa Integration
Report reinforces this direction, highlighting both progress
and persistent gaps in regional integration and identifying reforms needed to
accelerate Agenda 2063.
This is where South-South
cooperation can become more than a diplomatic slogan.
Imagine a Ugandan district
learning from Kenya's experience in climate-smart agriculture. A Tanzanian
institution sharing practical knowledge on sustainable land management. A
Rwandan innovation adapted by entrepreneurs elsewhere in the region. A
successful community-based energy model moving across borders—not as a packaged
project, but as knowledge that communities can reshape for their own circumstances.
The objective should not
be to copy solutions. It should be to shorten the learning curve.
A solution developed in one
country may need to be redesigned for another. What matters is creating
pathways for learning,
adaptation and scale while keeping national priorities and
local communities at the centre.
This matters because East
Africa's development challenges are increasingly interconnected. Climate
change, food insecurity, ecosystem degradation, energy access, unemployment,
water insecurity and digital transformation do not respect national boundaries.
South-South and triangular
cooperation can therefore become a practical means of implementation for SDG 17—helping
countries mobilise expertise, strengthen institutional and human capacities,
diversify development partnerships and advance nationally owned SDG priorities.
But there is a danger.
South-South cooperation could
become just another series of conferences, exchange visits, memoranda and
photographs if it does not ultimately change what happens on the ground.
The real test is not how many
delegations travel.
It is whether a district
officer returns with a capacity that improves public service delivery.
Whether a farmer gains access
to knowledge or technology that strengthens resilience.
Whether a young entrepreneur
finds a regional market.
Whether a community adapts a
successful restoration model to its own landscape.
Whether governments become
better equipped to deliver the priorities they have already identified.
That is when cooperation becomes
development.
So, on this United Nations
Day for South-South Cooperation, perhaps the question we should ask is not:
“Who will bring us the
solution?”
But:
“Who in our region is
already solving this problem—and how can we help their solution travel?”
East Africa does not have to
wait for every solution to arrive from somewhere else.
Some of the solutions we
need may already be here.
Our challenge is to connect
them, adapt them, finance them and scale them—through partnerships that put
African knowledge, national ownership and people's lived realities at the
centre.
Solidarity should not
simply move resources. It should move knowledge, opportunity and solutions.