The emergence of regulatory capitalism in Africa

Abstract

As part of conceptualizing a form of capitalism specific to the African continent, this paper offers an institutional study of the development of regulatory institutions in Africa, suggested by and suggestive to current theoretical accounts of regulation and its relationship to capitalism. Recent scholarship has sketched a vision of regulatory capitalism that has much traction in the now-emerged discipline of governance but less in that of economics. That vision depends upon functioning regulatory institutions and effective enforcement strategies. Drawing from both disciplines and from the varieties of capitalism literature, this paper examines how and to what extent the African continent can be characterized as a regulatory region.

One of the processes by which Africa has become a regulatory region is the founding of public regulatory agencies. Another is the growth and spread of firms and practices associated with regulatory capitalism. Reflective of these processes, attention at both national and regional levels within Africa to the establishment and operation of competition regimes, to complementary regulatory regimes (with attention here to the telecommunications and public procurement fields), and to the rise and significance of African regional economic communities provides evidence for envisioning Africa as a regulatory region. This evidence suggests that the exploration of a distinctively African variety of regulatory capitalism is warranted.

Keywords:

• regulation
• competition
• governance
• diffusion
• regional economic communities
• regional integration
• capitalism
• institutions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For purposes here, and depending on the context, the term region includes both the totality of the national and supra-national jurisdictions existing on the African continent and the supra-national sub-regions (such as the East African Community or the Southern African Development Community or SADC) that are understood to compose the building blocks of African integration efforts such as the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (Ismail, 2018; Gathii, 2011).

2 International Competition Network, ‘ICN fact sheet and messages’, April 2009. http://www.internationalcompetitionnetwork.org/uploads/library/doc608.pdf.

3 World Bank, ‘Breaking down barriers: Unlocking Africa's potential through vigorous competition policy’, 12.

4 CCRED, 2.

5 Another important further area for investigation in this vein of research would be the establishment histories of independent regulatory agencies in Africa under regulatory capitalism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Klaaren

Jonathan Klaaren is Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand. His book From prohibited immigrants to citizens: The origins of citizenship and nationality in South Africa (Wits University Press, 2017) focuses on the relationship between migration and law in the construction of South Africa’s foundational concept of citizenship. His recent work and publications are on competition law, economic regulation and African regional integration.