Efficiency of Ethiopian Telecom Consumers Protection Law: Lessons from Safaricom's Previous Experiences in Kenya

Abstract

This article assesses the efficiency of Ethiopia's telecom consumer protection laws in protecting consumers from potential infringements, particularly through the previous experiences of Safaricom’s telecom consumer rights violations in Kenya. It employs a comparative research approach, analyzing the consumer rights infringements in Kenya and assessing how they would be treated under Ethiopia's current legal framework. The central question of this article is whether Ethiopian law can effectively safeguard consumers if similar infringements occur in Ethiopia. It draws cases against Safaricom’s consumer rights violations, including the rights to privacy of service users, suspension of telecom services without sufficient cause and provision of poor-quality services with high tariff rates and limited networks in Kenya. The Ethiopian telecom consumer protection law has the deficiency to redress the recurrence of similar violations in Ethiopia, mainly the absence of legal regimes for high tariffs, governing M-Pesa transactions and the mandate to provide awareness for consumers by the Ethiopian Communication Authority (ECA). Besides, the absence of clear and sufficient guidelines to determine and control service providers' conduct, in addition to the weak practice of an organized participation of the consumer associations shows the legal framework's poor capacity to defend the possible rights violations. Therefore, this article suggests legislative interventions to address the identified gaps, mainly regulating service tariffs, governing M-Pesa transactions, and empowering ECA and consumers to organize and participate in their rights protections.