Regulating competition in African digital markets: From form to substance

Since the 1980s, many African countries began to adopt competition laws alongside structural adjustment and trade liberalization measures, selectively borrowing from existing EU and US regimes. Today, in response to global consolidation in digital markets, African governments are increasingly embracing sectoral regulatory schemes that have pro-competitive aims but go beyond traditional competition law. The structure and goals of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) are now being reflected in national and regional African frameworks such as the AfCFTA Protocol, South Africa’s Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry and Kenya’s Competition (Amendment) Bill of 2024. The proliferation of these pro-competitive regimes in the African region leads to two principal lessons. First, there seems to be an important alignment of interests between the EU and African jurisdictions vis-à-vis US tech giants. Reining in the power of US tech companies seems a fertile terrain of convergence and a priority in both regions. Second, despite the many limits of African competition authorities’ enforcement capabilities, pro-competitive regimes illustrate a hopeful appetite for an enforcement approach to tech markets that is not antithetic to traditional economic development rationales and yet that leaves space for local and regional African values for governing tech markets.