Symposium Posts

The objective of integrating the African economies is now continental. Hence, the entry into force of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement for a Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) marks a new and more ambitious stage in the process of integrating African economies[1]. Generally, regional integration projects and initiatives have a strong focus on the trade dimension. They aim at lowering and eliminating trade barriers by prohibiting participating members' restraints of trade in the internal market or by creating a common market. The trade dimension is important. However, its objectives would not be achieved without a competition policy dimension as a compliment. Hence, restrictions of competition on the regional level have both a trade and a competition component. To achieve the objective of creating regional markets free of trade barriers, it is crucial, in addition to the prohibiting restriction of trade, to police private and State initiated anti-competitive behaviors.

There are numerous regional agreements among developing countries. They aim to tear down the trade and investment barriers between and among their members. Moreover, they adopt competition policy and free movement policy to free their internal markets of private and state restraints to achieve market integration, efficiency, opportunity, competitiveness, and a higher standard of living. But most of these regional arrangements do not live up to their potential. Competition policy lags. Why? Reasons commonly given include asymmetry of the member states and their interests, lack of funding and sources for it, large informal markets, governance not sympathetic to competition, and corrupt leadership of nations set on retaining power and privilege. But two critical elements are virtually always overlooked, and unless they are recognized and prioritized, the hope of the regional agreements will never be realized.

This article highlights the benefits the CSME region enjoys for having a regional competition framework and the challenges faced by the Commission in meeting its mandate. It also presents some strategies which the Commission used to overcome these challenges.

The WAEMU competition policy is, from the point of view of material and procedural law, in conformity with international standards, with certain specificities relating to the control of concentrations, the establishment of a special category of anti-competitive practices attributable to States and, above all, a centralized institutional approach with almost exclusive competence of the Community bodies. Then, eighteen (18) years (2003-2021) after the adoption of the implementing texts, WAEMU competition policy has therefore contributed to the consolidation of the Customs Union, the free movement of goods and liberalization in several sectors of activity (telecommunications, communication, energy, etc.). Moreover, it has become an essential tool for promoting regional economic integration in the Union.

While there are obvious gains in adopting a one-stop-shop approach as highlighted above, it is unclear whether it is realistic and to what extent it can apply. This results from the different individual needs of African countries at different developmental stages, as experience over time has shown that one size does not fit all in competition regulation.

Whatever their level of evolution in competition regulation, developing countries, particularly African countries except for a few rare success stories such as South Africa, need to interrogate their RCRs and national competition laws. Countries without a competition regime or law have the advantage of avoiding the Washington Consensus trap and forging a national competition law tailored to their development goals

This Symposium is jointly organized by AfronomicsLaw, the Chair of International Relations at the Hochshule für Politik, Technical University of Munich Germany, and the Mandela Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. It builds on a paper written by Prof Tim Büthe and Vellah Kedogo Kigwiru in the inaugural issue of African Journal of International Economic Law, titled 'The Spread of Competition Law and Policy in Africa: A Research Agenda'. The journal article set out a research agenda for better understanding the reality, promise, and limitations of competition law and policy in Africa at the n1ational and regional level. Consequently, this Symposium brings together competition law scholars, practitioners, and competition agencies' bureaucrats across the world to critically and comparatively discuss the reality, promises, and challenges facing the enforcement of specifically regional level competition policies in the Global South.

This blog post largely derives from a recent study entitled Bank of Zambia’s Autonomy Amidst Political Turnovers in Zambia, which investigated whether BOZ could effectively deliver on its mandate given the context of political interferences arising out of Zambia’s competitive clientelist democracy. That study concluded that, over time, BOZ had enshrined its independence in the law and had been quite effective at delivering on its mandate to stabilize prices and develop the financial system as required in a market economy.

To support safe and stable market functioning, and to mitigate discordance and incompatibility risks, this paper proposes the establishment of a common set of Afro-market-centric foundational principles (“African Core Principles for Systemically Important Payment Systems”, or “Afro-SIPS Principles”) to provide a baseline framework of standards to which all African cross-border payment systems – including systemically important national payment systems – should adhere and incorporate into their applicable rulebooks and risk management frameworks.

It is proposed that South Africa as a developing country needs to have a central bank that has the semblance of a developmental central bank, and that takes care of consumers, different than the orthodox, neoliberal central bank that focuses on price stability and lowering of inflation and expect market forces to protect consumers. The Twin Peaks model of financial regulation where the central bank is explicitly appointed as the guardian of financial stability, could be a small step on the way of the SARB becoming such semblance of a developmental central bank.