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SA Policy Space

Competition Commission Digital Markets Inquiry

Regulatory BurdenProposedMedium TermRaised 3× in committeeTrade, Industry and Competition

Theme: Competition/antitrust

First raisedNov 2021Last discussedFeb 2024No committee discussion in 12+ months3 meetings on the record ↓
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Reform at a glance

What changes
Competition Commission Digital Markets Inquiry
Responsible actor (recorded)
Competition Commission / Department of Trade, Industry and Competition
Recorded status
Proposed — editorial assessment.
Milestone described by this status
Status scope has not yet been independently documented; it may cover only part of this reform.
Next documented milestone
Next milestone not yet documented
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Description

The Competition Commission launched its Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry (OIPMI) in 2021, investigating market power in digital platforms including online food delivery (Uber Eats, Mr D Food), e-commerce (Takealot/Makro), app stores (Apple, Google), and online classifieds. Interim remedies issued in 2023 include mandatory listing of rival products on dominant platforms, prohibition on parity pricing clauses, and data access rights for third-party sellers. The final report (2024) recommends structural remedies modelled on the EU Digital Markets Act — including mandatory data portability, interoperability requirements, and algorithm transparency obligations. The Digital Platforms Competition Framework extends buyer power regulations (introduced in the Competition Amendment Act 2018 for agri-food markets) to digital platform markets. The PC on Trade BRRRs note the inquiry's significance for SMME market access: over 60% of South African SMMEs report digital platforms as their primary sales channel, making platform governance a small business policy issue as much as a competition one. App store commission rates of 15–30% are specifically flagged as an excessive pricing concern under Section 8 of the Competition Act.

Assessment

Growth Impact3/5

Responsible: Competition Commission / Department of Trade, Industry and Competition

Feasibility Assessment

High: Commission has clear statutory basis under Competition Act Section 43B. Interim findings binding on firms via consent orders. Legislative amendments may be needed for ex ante obligations.

Stakeholder Landscape

Who backs this reform, who needs convincing, and which interests or red lines shape political feasibility.

Backers

14

2 stakeholders

Negotiation weight

0

0 conditional actors

Opposition weight

0

0 opposing actors

Coalition Read

AI-drafted stances · 0 reviewed

2 of 38 actors mapped — not scored

A coalition score needs at least 3 mapped stances, or actors carrying 25% of the map's influence. The stances below are the evidence; the average over this few of them would not be.

Anchor: Competition Commission.

Political Tractability

—Needs reviewed signals

No reviewed signals · 0% of mapped influence has been reviewed.

Backers2 stakeholders
Competition CommissionOperational backerInfluence 7/10

The Digital Markets Inquiry is a Competition Commission-led initiative under its statutory mandate.

Interest: Reducing market concentration and promoting effective competition across freight, telecoms, financial services, food retail, and healthcare. Statutory…

Concern: SOE concessioning that creates private monopolies rather than competitive markets; spectrum concentration in telecoms post-auction; banking sector bar…

Engagement path: Already actively engaging across sectors. Needs reform designs to address market structure, not just ownership change — concessioning must include com…

DTIC (Dept. of Trade, Industry & Competition)Operational backerInfluence 7/10

The Competition Commission Digital Markets Inquiry falls within DTIC's competition policy mandate.

Interest: Industrial policy objectives — local content requirements, beneficiation, BBBEE transformation, SEZ development, and protection of manufacturing emplo…

Concern: Full logistics liberalisation without local content protections could hollow out domestic manufacturing by reducing input costs asymmetrically for ext…

Engagement path: Logistics and energy reforms include localisation provisions and domestic content requirements; trade agreements include industrial policy safeguards;…

OECD

Referenced in OECD Economic Surveys: South Africa

OECD SA Survey (2017, 2020, 2022, 2025). Pro-competition reforms are a core OECD recommendation; the 2025 survey estimates they could add ~4.5pp to GDP over 10 years.

Platform gatekeeping is the defining competition challenge of the 2020s — the Commission's inquiry positions SA ahead of most African regulators. — Competition Commission Annual Report 2024

Implementation Roadmap

The Competition Commission finalises and publishes the OIPMI final report with binding structural remedies by Q2 2025, drawing on the EU Digital Markets Act as a template for a South African Digital Markets Bill tabled by DTIC by Q4 2025. The Enforcement Division implements interim access and parity-pricing remedies immediately, with quarterly compliance dashboards. National Treasury and DTIC fund a dedicated digital markets unit within the Competition Tribunal. Success is measurable reductions in platform commission rates and entry of new domestic platform competitors within 24 months of the final report.

Evidence & Research

Research corpus →
  • Narrow Price Parity and Market Power in Digital Platforms

    ERSA · Jul 2026

    The paper directly evaluates price parity obligations (PPOs), which are the specific interim remedy the Competition Commission prohibited in its 2023 OIPMI decision, and assesses their competitive effects on digital platforms using South African evidence including Booking.com's removal of PPOs.

  • Regulating digital platforms: A comparative analysis of Kenya and South Africa

    ERSA · Jun 2026

    The paper directly compares South Africa's market inquiry approach to digital platform regulation (the OIPMI) with Kenya's alternative regulatory framework, analyzing the same competition concerns about platform dominance and barriers to entry that the inquiry addresses.

  • Competition policy in the digital economy: The South African perspective

    Competition Commission · Jul 2021

    The paper directly addresses competition policy in digital economy markets from the South African Competition Commission perspective, which is the institution and subject matter of the Digital Markets Inquiry policy idea.

Links proposed by lexical matching and screened by a calibrated research judge. Follow the paper for the full argument and its caveats.

Policy documents

No linked official-document evidence yet. Coverage is incomplete.

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Status History

tracked since Mar 2026
  1. Recorded as Proposed when status tracking began — held since at least Mar 2026.
    Mar 2026

Data as of 2026-10-10 · latest PMG meeting 2026-10-02