COMESA CC seeks law amendments to work on harmful digital content and scams

 

BY PAUL TENTENA

LIVINGSTONE, ZAMBIA -The COMESA Competition Commission (CCC) in recognition of the increasing complexity and harm to consumers on the online platform has proposed amendments to prohibit dark patterns or scams and harmful digital content.

According to Dr. Willard Mwemba, the COMESA Competition Commission Director and Chief Executive Officer, dark patterns or scams are the supreme evil of consumer welfare violations, as they are done deliberately to harm consumers.

“The COMESA Competition Commission has noted a rise in harm to children on digital platforms and has proposed provisions to protect them from behaviour such as lewd or lascivious and creating an avenue for intervention in these matters through development of guidelines to address such concerns,” said Mwemba while addressing Journalists in a press conference in Livingstone, Zambia.

Dark patterns are tricks used on consumers when they are actively engaged on electronic devices.

Consumers find themselves engaged in a certain process which leads them to other several processes, one after the other and results in actions such as inability of the consumer to effectively unsubscribe from active subscriptions, purchase in error of a subscription that a consumer had not intended to purchase among others.

Mwemba said they have noted an increase in consumer violations which touch on false claims in products with respect to the ability of products to promote the health of consumers.

He added that the proposed amendments seek to enhance provisions to deter false and misleading claims on products, provide more transparency for consumers in product labelling, strengthen recalls in the COMESA Region (both voluntary and compulsory) and strengthen enforcement efforts in standards of products distributed and imported in the COMESA Region.

“The amendments also include public interest concerns on environmental issues in review of mergers and acquisitions,” he said.

In the sought law amendments, the COMESA Competition Commission seeks change of the name to reflect the consumer protection mandate to be known as the “COMESA Competition and Consumer Commission."

Dr. Mwemba said provisions will be introduced to address abuse of buyer power/ abuse of economic dependency where challenges have been noted that powerful buyers dictate unfair terms of trade which may have the ultimate effect of constraining competition and affecting consumer welfare.

“We also seek to introduce new merger notification thresholds for the digital market to address competition concerns arising from mergers in there. The proposed amendments are for the transaction value to be considered,” stressed Mwemba.

He said, in the amendments, the COMESA Competition Commission seeks to shift from non- suspensory to suspensory regime.

“The current COMESA competition legal framework provides that parties do not have to await the approval of the CCC once they file merger notification. Proposed amendment for parties to seek approval of the Commission before implementing a merger and that implementing a merger without the approval of the Commission shall be a breach for which parties can be fined,” he said.