In April 2017, the COMESA Competition Commission (CCC) conditionally approved a large merger between Brasseries Internationales Holdings (BIH) Ltd and Carlsberg Malawi Ltd (Carlsberg). BIH is the holding company of Castel Group, a French beverages company. The second party to the merger, Carlsberg, is a beverages manufacturer participating solely in the Malawian market in Africa. The merger spans four countries: Ethiopia, Malawi, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
DStv Media Sales (Pty) Ltd (DMS) was recently found to have been involved in anti-competitive behaviour and has admitted to price fixing as well as fixing trading conditions. This comes after an investigation by the Competition Commission of South Africa which commenced in November 2011 where it was concluded that, through a company called Media Credit Co-Ordinators (MCC), associated media agencies were offered discounts for early settlement of their accounts of 16.5% for payments made within 45 days whereas non-member agencies were only given a 15% discount.
The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) set floor prices for data and voice services including promotional packages, effective in January 2017. The floor prices are set at $0.12 per minute for voice services, and $0.02 per megabyte for data. Initially data prices were below $0.01 per megabyte.
The Competition Authority of Kenya has ordered all mobile money service providers, including Safaricom, to disclose all mobile money service fees payable by consumers for USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) based transactions.
On 17 November 2016, the South African Competition Tribunal (“Tribunal”) confirmed a settlement agreement reached between the Competition Commission and ArcelorMittal South Africa Ltd (AMSA) with regards to AMSA’s involvement in the long steel and scrap metal cartels. The settlement covered four complaints against AMSA, three of which involved collusion in flat steel, long steel and scrap metal markets and the other on excessive pricing of flat steel products.
South Africa has high data prices compared to other countries globally. The parliamentary portfolio committee on telecommunications and postal services conducted a two day hearing in September (2016) to investigate the high data prices in South Africa. In these hearings the South African mobile network operators (MNOs) submitted that the primary reason for high data costs was the “spectrum crunch” in large urban areas.
A summary of some of the major mergers, acquisitions and enforcement cases in the region.
Entry of the mobile technology ride-sharing service, Uber, into passenger transport markets across the world has brought disruptive competition with substantial benefits to consumers. Uber has rapidly grown its footprint in Africa with operations in eight countries including Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania.
In June this year, Liquid Telecom, a subsidiary of Zimbabwean telecommunications company Econet Wireless Group, announced its intentions to purchase Neotel, a network operator in South Africa. The deal is in partnership with Royal Bafokeng Holdings and is worth a reported R6.5 billion (US$ 430 million).
According to the South African Competition Act, the competition authorities are obliged to consider public interest grounds in merger analysis. The guidelines which were recently finalised by the Competition Commission of South Africa, and gazetted in 2 June 2016, seek to provide guidance on how the Commission will evaluate public interest considerations when evaluating mergers.
