Nigeria, more African countries way behind ecommerce law compliance

The six areas - electronic transactions, data protection and privacy, cybercrime and cyber security, consumer protection online, online content regulation and domain name - were developed after a series of workshops and consultation with lawmakers and government representatives from the 15 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) members, according to a report issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The need to harmonise ecommerce legislation became a priority for the region following the noticeable strong growth of electronic transactions within the bloc which prompted an objective to achieve a vision of creating a borderless, peaceful, prosperous and cohesive community built on good governance. This resulted in the ECOWASs request in 2013 for UNCTAD to support it in its efforts to create a harmonised legal framework, itwebafrica.com reports.

Senegal is the next in adherence having fully adopted four of the laws and one partially. Though almost all other countries had adopted legislation in at least one of the areas, Nigeria, as a giant ecommerce country, has fully adopted only one of the laws - online content regulation – and two others partially while three are still in draft.

The Director of Banking and Payment System at the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dipo Fatokun, has disclosed that the volume of e-transactions in the country has risen by 43.4% as of December 2015 with a value indicating an increase of 11.6% while the value of the actual loss to fraud dropped by more than 60%.

UNCTAD says a key challenge the countries face in adopting ecommerce legislation according to government reps consulted is a lack of understanding of the legal issues related to the different areas. More than three-quarters said this was true for the legal issues related to privacy, more than two-thirds for those related to e-transactions and cybercrime, and over half for those related to consumer protection.

Nothing has changed in the assessments result since released in December, 2015, says Cécile Barayre-El Shami, UNCTADs Programme Manager on E-Commerce and Law Reform. She also confirmed that UNCTAD will be organising an E-Commerce Week from 18 to 22 April, 2016 in Geneva with a focus on Emerging e-commerce topics and trends where a high-level round-table will explore the perspectives and challenges of various stakeholders.