On 17 February 2026, the COMESA Competition and Consumer Commission issued Notice of Investigation 1 of 2026 — the first formal investigation ever launched under the new COMESA Competition and Consumer Protection Regulations, adopted in December 2025. The target is Meta Platforms Ireland Limited. The subject is a policy change Meta made quietly in October 2025 that, from January 15, 2026, bars businesses from using the WhatsApp Business API if their primary offering to users is a third-party AI chatbot or assistant — while Meta’s own AI, Meta AI, retains full and preferential platform access. On March 16, the window for stakeholder submissions to the Commission closed. The investigation continues. No finding has been made.
The Commission’s position is explicit on what it suspects but has not yet found. The CCCC CEO stated it has “reasonable cause to suspect” that Meta holds a dominant position across COMESA’s 21-member market and that the October 2025 policy change could “substantially lessen competition” by depriving rival AI companies of access to a crucial gateway. The Commission stressed that the start of an investigation does not mean Meta has broken any rules. But the framing — first investigation, new regulations specifically designed for digital platforms, complaint from a pan-African legal firm — is not accidental. This is a calibrated opening move.
What Meta Actually Changed
In October 2025, Meta updated its WhatsApp Business Solution Terms to introduce a new restriction: businesses that deploy AI-based chatbot services on WhatsApp must not be offering AI assistance as their primary service. The policy came into force on January 15, 2026 for AI providers already operating on the platform. The effect is structural: a fintech using WhatsApp to send payment confirmations can continue. A startup whose core product is an AI customer service agent delivered through WhatsApp cannot.
Meta AI, the company’s own conversational AI assistant, faces no such restriction. It is integrated directly into WhatsApp across all markets where it has been rolled out, with native access to the conversation layer that third-party developers are now locked out of.
The complaint was filed with COMESA by AdLegal, a pan-African digital law firm, on 5 January 2026 — two weeks before the policy came into force. The theory of harm is straightforward: WhatsApp is the primary digital communications and commerce layer across most of COMESA’s 21 member states, including Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Egypt. A startup building an AI-powered business assistant in Nairobi or Kampala is not competing on a level playing field with Meta AI if Meta AI is baked into the platform and third-party alternatives are locked out at the API layer. That is the definition of self-preferencing. Whether it constitutes abuse of dominance under COMESA’s new regulations is what the investigation will determine.
Why the New Regulations Matter
The December 2025 adoption of COMESA’s new Competition and Consumer Protection Regulations is the regulatory context that makes this investigation possible in a way it would not have been two years ago. The previous framework did not have explicit provisions for digital platform market power, network effects, or gateway firm behaviour. The new regulations do. They were drafted with explicit awareness of the EU’s Digital Markets Act framework and the experience of African national competition authorities that had been trying to apply analogue-era competition tools to digital market structures.
The first investigation under those regulations targeting one of the world’s largest technology companies is not a coincidence. The CCCC had reason to move quickly, on a complaint that fit the new framework precisely, to establish that the regulations have teeth and that the Commission will use them.
The Global Parallel
COMESA is not acting alone. On 9 February 2026, the European Commission issued a formal Statement of Objections to Meta on the same policy — finding that the WhatsApp Business Terms restriction on third-party AI chatbots appears at first sight to breach EU competition rules. The Commission indicated it intends to impose interim measures. Italy’s Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) moved earlier still, imposing interim measures requiring Meta to suspend the policy in December 2025.
The sequencing matters for how to read the COMESA action. This is not a developing-market regulator acting in isolation on a novel theory. It is an African competition authority moving in parallel with Europe’s most sophisticated competition enforcement apparatus, on the same set of facts, under a framework deliberately designed to reach the same conduct. The coordinated pressure — Rome, Brussels, Lusaka — creates a global enforcement perimeter that Meta will need to address as a unified problem, not a series of isolated local disputes.
Why WhatsApp Dominance Looks Different in Africa
In Europe and North America, WhatsApp is one messaging option among several. In most COMESA member states, WhatsApp is the primary channel through which small businesses communicate with customers, manage supplier relationships, process informal payments, and receive job leads. WhatsApp Business has become the de facto CRM for the micro-enterprise economy that operates below the formalised fintech layer. In markets where data costs constrain general internet access, WhatsApp’s data-light design and zero-rated status with several operators make it the default digital business environment in a way that competing platforms structurally cannot replicate.
That market reality gives the CCCC’s jurisdictional claim a weight that goes beyond the technical question of API access. The allegation is not merely that Meta is self-preferencing in a competitive market — it is that Meta is acting as a gatekeeper to the digital economy for hundreds of millions of small African businesses, and has chosen to use that gateway position to advantage its own AI products over local alternatives.
African AI startups building on the WhatsApp Business API — and there are hundreds of them, across customer service automation, agricultural advisory services, health information delivery, and microfinance onboarding — are watching this case for a reason. If Meta’s policy stands, the most accessible channel for AI-powered services in African markets is effectively reserved for Meta’s own model. If the CCCC’s investigation produces a binding conduct remedy, it would reopen that channel.
Where the Case Stands
The March 16 deadline closed the stakeholder submissions window — not a phase of the investigation that produces a public ruling. The Commission is now in the substantive analysis phase, assessing both the conduct and its market effects before reaching any preliminary position. Under COMESA’s competition procedures, that analysis can take months. A consent order, if Meta chooses to negotiate, could come faster; a contested adjudicated finding would take longer.
The CCCC has been unambiguous: the investigation is at a preliminary stage and no findings have been made. What has been made is a statement of institutional intent — that Africa’s largest trade bloc intends to treat digital platform market power as a competition enforcement priority, that the new 2025 regulatory framework will be tested on real cases against real companies, and that the continent’s most commercially significant messaging platform is the opening subject.
Whether the COMESA case follows the European path — interim measures, negotiated commitments, eventual conduct adjustment — or charts its own course will define whether African competition enforcement has moved from aspiration to operational capability. The case is not over. It is, in a meaningful sense, just beginning.
— Technology Desk, BETAR.africa
