Over recent years the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Competition Commission (CCC) significantly increased its enforcement activities. This involved the CCC expanding its focus beyond merger control enforcement to actively...

Enforcement of the East African Community (EAC) merger control regime commenced effective November 2025. The concept of control is a key element in determining whether a transaction is subject to notification...

The ECOWAS Regional Competition Authority (ERCA) conducted a nine-country study on e-commerce and digital finance, examining competition, consumer protection, regulatory gaps, and market conditions.

The COMESA Consumer and Competition Commission has introduced new guidelines addressing expedited merger review procedures, comfort letters, and advisory opinions. These procedural enhancements aim to improve predictability and efficiency in the COMESA merger control regime, offering businesses clearer pathways for notification requirements and review processes across member states.

The Saudi General Authority for Competition (GAC) issued advisory guidance for companies operating in Saudi Arabia on internal compliance mechanism to prevent violations of the Kingdom's antitrust regime.

In recent years, the landscape of competition enforcement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has witnessed increased emphasis on inter-agency cooperation.

The East African Community (EAC)—the regional economic community made up of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda—start enforcing their merger control regime on 1 November 2025.

Licensing agreements occupy a structurally ambiguous position in merger control, sitting between asset acquisitions and ordinary commercial contracts. This client brief examines how European Commission precedent may inform the treatment of licensing agreements under the COMESA merger control regime, given the limited guidance and decisional practice from the COMESA Competition and Consumer Commission.

The ancillary restraints doctrine, originally developed by the European Commission, validates restraints objectively necessary to implement legitimate transactions with neutral or positive competitive effects. This analysis examines how Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Tunisia approach ancillary restraints in economic concentrations, revealing significant jurisdictional variations in regulatory frameworks and enforcement practices across the Levant and North Africa region.

The EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR, Regulation (EU) 2022/2560) is a tool adopted to address distortions in the EU internal market caused by subsidies from non-EU governments.

Prohibiting abuse of dominance is one of the main pillars of competition law in any jurisdiction. Abuse of dominance describes unilateral conduct by which businesses use their substantial influence in a specific market to undermine fair competition.

Licensing agreements occupy a structurally ambiguous position in merger control, sitting between asset acquisitions and ordinary commercial contracts.

In 2018, the Kingdom of Bahrain enacted Law No. 31 of 2018 concerning the Promotion and Protection of Competition ("Competition Law"), which aims to foster a balanced marketplace...

With Simone Biles winning five more gold medals at the recent World Gymnastics Championships it appears that only injury can prevent her from being the star of Tokyo 2020.

The ECOWAS merger control regime grants the ERCA Council discretionary authority to approve anti-competitive transactions when a clear and demonstrable public interest exists. This power, analytically distinct from competition assessment, carries significant strategic implications for parties transacting across the twelve-member West African economic community.

As part of Kingdom of Bahrain's (Bahrain) package of laws designed to further boost its economic diversification and liberalization, the Bahrain government issued Law No. 31 of 2018 ...

As cross-border business and regulatory enforcement become more intertwined, competition authorities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are stepping up efforts to regulate.

Firms conducting anti-competitive behavior may find their agreements to be unenforceable and risk being fined for particularly impaired conduct as well as exposing themselves to possible damages actions.

Looking back at 2025, there have been impactful developments in regulatory M&A provisions across national regimes in the Middle East and Noth Africa as well as regional merger control regimes on across the African continent.

The ECOWAS consumer protection framework is entering a decisive phase of institutional maturation: the cross-border consumer protection regulation endorsed at the fifth ECOWAS Ministerial Meeting...