Market Inquiries for Digital Markets: Lessons from South Africa

South Africa has addressed digital platforms not through digital-specific regulation but through the Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry and subsequent non binding guidance by the Competition Commission. It thus offers a test case for how far a general market-inquiry instrument can perform the functions of such regulation. The article distinguishes between competition problems that the Commission has addressed and those it has not; for the latter, the absence of intervention may reflect the scope of the inquiry rather than a limit of the instrument. For the former, including price parity, self-preferencing and the use of business-user data, the South African framework reaches much the same conduct as the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) and furthermore takes account of the participation of small firms and firms owned by historically disadvantaged persons. The differences from the DMA lie in what triggers intervention and in how obligations are specified, how long they apply and how they are enforced. The German and UK digital-specific regimes answer these questions differently from the DMA. How far South Africa’s market-inquiry instrument performs the functions of digital-specific regulation therefore also depends on which regime serves as the reference point.