The Solutions We Need May Already Be Here: Can South-South Cooperation Help East Africa Scale?

Source: imam-us.org

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.