After its 2017 administration change, the Republic of Angola is eager to join other African nations with nascent competition-law enforcement regimes: Having been approved by a unanimous majority of 183 votes in parliament, the new Angolan competition act is expected to be enforced by the also newly-established “Competition Regulatory Authority” (“ARC”) in short order, before year’s end, according to experts.

According to reports, the Angolan law (comprising 56 articles across 8 chapters) prominently includes principles such as the public-interest criterion and “rules of sound competition in morality and ethics.”

Says Andreas Stargard, an antitrust/competition and white-collar attorney with Primerio Ltd.: “These are concepts often deemed non-traditional in the antitrust laws in the Western hemisphere.  Yet, public-interest considerations are increasingly common in African competition-law legislation and indeed often form the basis for otherwise difficult to justify pragmatic enforcement decisions we now encounter more frequently across the continent, both in merger and non-merger cases.”

Angola is a member of the African Union and the SADC (Southern African Development Community), whose most prominent member, the Republic of South Africa, has a comparatively long history of including public-interest considerations in its two decades of antitrust enforcement.  As to the general concept of Angola finally adopting a competition-law regime, it appears that a key driver was the anticipated diversification of the domestic economy:

“A functioning Angolan competition regime (meaning not only the statute but also including an effective enforcement agency) is long overdue, as recognised by the recently elected Angolan president, João Lourenço,” says attorney Stargard. “By supporting enactment of the Competition Bill, Mr. Lourenço has made good on his campaign promise from 2017 to incentivise foreign direct investment, increase domestic business growth, and — importantly for the population — encourage price competition in local consumer goods markets, as the cost of living in Angola is among the highest on the African continent”.

One of the drivers of the new government’s push for FDI and organic GDP growth is the desire to de-link the Angolan economic dependence from oil prices and production, and possibly also from China (which remains the country’s largest trading partner by far). Angolan fossil fuel and diamond exports — together by far the largest sectors of the economy, and as commodity industries, quite naturally subject to collusion risk and/or monopolistic practices, according to Mr. Stargard — have yielded at best inconsistent benefits to the country’s population at-large, and President Lourenço’s pro-competition intitiative appears to support the diversification of his country’s lopsided economy historically focused on mining and resource extraction.