REGULATING PLATFORM POWER IN NIGERIA AND BRAZIL:Competition Law, Consumer Protection and the Limits of Ex AnteDigital Market Reform

Abstract

The rapid expansion of digital marketplaces has generated profound regulatory challenges for emerging economies,
exposing the inadequacy of legacy competition and consumer protection frameworks designed for traditional market
structures. This paper undertakes a comparative legal analysis of the regulatory frameworks governing digital
marketplaces in Nigeria and Brazil, two of the largest economies in their respective continental regions. Employing
a doctrinal and comparative methodology, it examines how each jurisdiction has deployed competition law and
consumer protection instruments to address the twin disorders of platform market concentration and consumer harm
in online commercial environments.
This paper evaluates Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018, the proposed Digital
Market Regulation Bill 2024, and recent enforcement actions by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection
Commission, alongside Brazil’s Competition Law (Law No 12,529/2011), the Consumer Protection Code, the
enforcement practice of the Administrative Council for Economic Defence (CADE), and the Fair Competition Act
for Digital Markets (Bill 4,675/2025).
The analysis reveals that while both jurisdictions are converging toward ex ante regulatory models influenced by
the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, significant differences exist in institutional design, enforcement
capacity, and the treatment of the relationship between competition law and consumer rights objectives. Both
jurisdictions battle with multi-sided market dynamics, network effects, and unbalanced exploitation of consumer
data, yet their responses differ significantly. Nigeria relies heavily on reactive, consumer-protection-driven
mandates that police market conduct (ex post), whereas Brazil is turning towards a specialised, targeted designation
model for ‘systemically relevant’ digital agents. This paper argues that the most effective regulatory framework for
the Global South must include or infuse flexibility, institutional coordination, and a context-sensitive understanding
of the developmental dimensions of digital market power.