E-commerce & (The Future of) Competition Regulation in Ethiopia

Abstract

Competition regulation in Ethiopia is relatively a recent phenomenon. With the introduction of a free market economy, Ethiopia has made considerable attempt s to design a modern legal framework for market competition. The Trade Competition and Consumer Protection Proclamation is currently the omnibus piece of legislation that govern s regulation of market competition generally, potentially including competition in online marketplaces. Recent years have seen the rise of e - commerce platforms of various sorts in Ethiopia. But it is unclear the extent to which and whether current Ethiopian competition law is fit for purpose of regulating this emerging marketplace. T he advent of e - commerce gives rise to a number of novel issues that warrant proper competition regulation , including concerns such as the Big Data, network effect, platform neutrality, free offer of products and disruptive innovations. This article examines whether and the extent to which current Ethiopian law attends to these novel issues of market competition in mushrooming online marketplaces. It argues that while the Competition Proclamation and draft laws regulate anti - competitive conducts to an extent, there are still drawbacks with regard to capturing the aforementioned non price competition concerns and other tacit anti - competitive conducts.