Roughly half of the African continent already has competition legislation in place, although some of these systems are not yet functional, and there are new systems coming into force all the time.
For example, the head office of the regional competition authority, the East African Competition Commission opened in Tanzania and the first commissioners were appointed, and the Nigerian parliamentary lower house recently passed what will be Nigeria’s first proper antitrust regime.
Although this regime still has two stages of approval to go, it looks set to be a reality soon.
Facilitate
In addition, there are competition law cooperation agreements being signed all the time between national and regional regulators in Africa, and with their counterparts abroad. These agreements will facilitate regulator cooperation, which will manifest as parallel investigations in co-operating countries.
For functioning regimes in Africa, the focus thus far has been on merger control rather than prohibited practices. This is normal in the evolution of a jurisdiction’s antitrust policy. We are seeing signs of development in these regimes as they build experience and expertise.
Part of this is the increasing sophistication in…
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Read this article by Nick Altini, Partner Antitrust and Competition Practice, Baker McKenzie, as well as a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the August/September 2017 edition of BusinessBrief.
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