The steady economic growth that Africa has enjoyed over the past decade is now waning. Global commodity prices, particularly oil, have weakened and China, Africa’s largest individual bilateral trading partner, has slowed considerably as it rebalances itself away from investment and growth. According to the IMF, a 1 percentage point decrease in China’s investment growth is associated with an average 0.6 percentage point decrease in Africa’s export growth rate. The depth of the China-Africa trade relationship explains why this month, the World Bank, in its annual Africa’s Pulse report, downgraded Africa’s growth projections from 4.6 per cent in 2014 to 3.7 per cent in 2015 – the lowest growth the region will have seen since the ripples of the global economic crisis hit it in 2009. A new period of slow growth demands new and creative responses from African leaders.

While the commodity climate and China’s slowdown are certainly a challenge for African policymakers, they also present a unique opportunity. Relying on the beneficial economic climate that has fostered complacency with market inefficiencies is now no longer an option. Necessity will demand that African governments adapt to unfavourable global trends by squeezing greater productivity from the structures and systems that are already in place. East Africa is already quietly making strides in eliminating economic inefficiencies and the progress has much to teach the rest of the region.

East African countries – Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi – have demonstrated over the past 24 months that attacking inefficiencies is not only possible, but yields rapid returns. Through the Northern Corridor Integration Project, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya have addressed longstanding bottlenecks in transportation. Being landlocked, Rwanda and Uganda rely on Kenya’s Mombasa port for trade, and a plethora of border inefficiencies made cargo travel times extremely costly and uncompetitive. Through regular meetings of the presidents of the countries and a focusing of government attention, the countries were able to reduce the travel time of cargo trucks from Mombasa to Kampala, Uganda from 18 days to 4 days, and between Mombasa and Kigali, Rwanda from 21 days to only 5 days. This progress was achieved from no new investment in roads or rail, but rather through the targeted elimination of inefficiencies.

Another inspiring example is East Africa’s recent telecom reform policies. The East African Community (EAC) recognized that expensive roaming fees that applied when operating across borders were impeding trade, communication and commerce between countries and decided to take action. The governments of Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda saw internal barriers to free-flowing communication as an obstacle to deepening the common market and pressured Safaricom, Airtel, MTN and others to accept a “One-Network-Area” agreement, which became operational in January. After reducing the tariffs for calling other national networks by more than 60 per cent, roaming traffic among the EAC member countries immediately reached staggering numbers. The Communications Authority of Kenya reported that since the One-Network-Area’s establishment, Kenya’s incoming roaming traffic from Rwanda increased by 951 per cent, and Kenya’s outbound roaming traffic increased by 254 per cent, meaning more revenues for the telecom operators. Last week’s Northern Corridor Summit in Nairobi expanded the One-Network-Area to include data, to deepen the impact.

Through political will, mutual cooperation and strong execution, East African countries have unleashed hidden value. Speaking of these efforts, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said: “We have found that we have the power to drive growth with what we already have on the ground in East Africa. The results not only help attract new investment partners, but more importantly provide the momentum required to tackle even bigger challenges together in the years ahead.”

Seeing the progress being made, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have joined the Northern Corridor Integration Project.

In the face of slowing external investment and the long-term timeframe of most infrastructure projects, short-term productivity gains can be unlocked by attacking economic inefficiencies with well thought-out and implemented collective solutions. If the rest of the continent follows East Africa’s example, either by initiative or by necessity, China’s slowdown could provide an opportunity to address longstanding issues that have been holding many African countries back from their full economic potential.