Despite mixed views on the stability of East Africa’s economic performance, one can objectively say the economies are growing and investors are confident about their performance.

The fourfold oversubscription of Kenya’s debut Eurobond is testimony to this. With such investor appetite for East Africa, financial services providers (FSP) are constantly assessing ways to leverage on this for growth.

East Africa is changing fast. Once considered a sleepy backwater, the bloc is attracting investors’ attention from every corner of the globe.

Financiers are lured by Kenya, the regional financial hub with the largest GDP in East and Central Africa. Rwanda, one of the world’s 20 fastest growing economies, with average GDP growth of over 7 per cent in the past 10 years; and Tanzania, which is keen to attract foreign investments by easing its processes of doing business.

Similarly South Sudan has lucrative oilfields and infrastructure projects, and Uganda’s fertile land potentially provides cheap raw materials for industries.

The bulk of resource-rich East Africa’s GDP comes from agriculture, precious metals and stones. With recent discoveries, oil and gas will soon join the list of vast resources.

Ideally, suppliers and buyers of commodities should mitigate adverse price movements through financial instruments and their derivatives, but to date the region only has rudimentary commodity exchanges. Should we then be shocked that derivatives of East African metals are being traded on an exchange in Toronto?

The region’s demographics are also shifting. Half of East Africa’s population is expected to be living in cities by 2050. Along with the demand for urbanisation, East Africa’s growing middle class and young population aged between 18 and 35 has become a constant refrain in economic analyses of the region.

In 2013, East Africa clinched 26 out of 84 private equity deals in sub Saharan Africa , making it the region with the highest PE deals. While many have ventured, adaptation to the nature of local markets remains a challenge.

Picking the right approach for each market is critical; so is understanding the practical challenges that global businesses face when it comes to executing their chosen strategies.

While financial markets remain attractive, the biggest PE deals were recorded in infrastructure and extractive industries, with opportunities to fund investments in development of other sectors.

Investments are being made in energy projects, whereas roads and railways are being built to facilitate transport along the East African corridors. Creative investments are needed to finance development projects; hence FSPs should generate solutions that are unique to EA needs.

So investors are targeting high growth investments. Are some financial institutions holding back as others cash in on the most gainful opportunities? I doubt it.

Opportunities are ripe for picking; all around are forces that could spur or inhibit your growth as a financial services provider, but what is important is not so much to have data as to use it to your advantage.

Perhaps you are a pessimist who looks at the economy and sees innumerable risks that demand impossible premiums.

Or, you may be one of those who take a look and see exactly where the gaps are, and how you could be the one who fills them, the fiercest competitor who shakes up the market.

Analysing the East African market I must pose this question: half full, or half empty – are we looking at the same glass?

Kananu Imathiu is a consultant with PwC Kenya’s advisory practice in strategy and operations services.