Session
Description:
AI markets are concentrating in ways not previously seen, and of deep concern. A small set of firms controls the inputs that decide who can build frontier AI: advanced chips, hyperscale cloud, training data, capital, and talent. The same firms extend that control downstream through partnerships, minority investments, exclusive compute deals, and talent raids that sit outside classic merger review. In July 2024, the competition authorities of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union jointly warned of concentrated control of key inputs, of incumbents entrenching their power in AI markets, and of arrangements among key players that could steer market outcomes. Enforcement since then has confirmed the diagnosis and exposed the limits of the toolkit: authorities reviewed the large cloud-and-model partnerships, yet most fell outside merger control. This session asks whether competition law built for pipelines and platforms fits AI markets, or whether AI needs bespoke rules: ex-ante obligations, dedicated digital market regimes, and access remedies for compute and data. And who writes those rules? No African firm to date trains frontier models. African economies, like most, consume AI that is built, priced, and governed elsewhere, and most African competition authorities must police global firms with national tools. Kenya is moving first: the Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2026 would create a dedicated digital markets regime, reaching abuse of superior bargaining position without proof of dominance. At regional level, the COMESA Competition and Consumer Commission runs cross-border merger control and conduct enforcement across 21 Member States, and its 2025 Regulations respond directly to digital markets. The design decisions now facing African legislators, between importing aspects of rules drafted abroad and building homegrown regimes suited to their own markets, will shape the extent to which African economies capture value from AI or merely pay rents on it.
AI markets are concentrating in ways not previously seen, and of deep concern. A small set of firms controls the inputs that decide who can build frontier AI: advanced chips, hyperscale cloud, training data, capital, and talent. The same firms extend that control downstream through partnerships, minority investments, exclusive compute deals, and talent raids that sit outside classic merger review. In July 2024, the competition authorities of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union jointly warned of concentrated control of key inputs, of incumbents entrenching their power in AI markets, and of arrangements among key players that could steer market outcomes. Enforcement since then has confirmed the diagnosis and exposed the limits of the toolkit: authorities reviewed the large cloud-and-model partnerships, yet most fell outside merger control. This session asks whether competition law built for pipelines and platforms fits AI markets, or whether AI needs bespoke rules: ex-ante obligations, dedicated digital market regimes, and access remedies for compute and data. And who writes those rules? No African firm to date trains frontier models. African economies, like most, consume AI that is built, priced, and governed elsewhere, and most African competition authorities must police global firms with national tools. Kenya is moving first: the Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2026 would create a dedicated digital markets regime, reaching abuse of superior bargaining position without proof of dominance. At regional level, the COMESA Competition and Consumer Commission runs cross-border merger control and conduct enforcement across 21 Member States, and its 2025 Regulations respond directly to digital markets. The design decisions now facing African legislators, between importing aspects of rules drafted abroad and building homegrown regimes suited to their own markets, will shape the extent to which African economies capture value from AI or merely pay rents on it.
Policy Question(s)
Where does durable market power sit in the AI value chain (chips, compute, data, models, distribution), and how does concentration form without triggering extant merger controls
When does ex-post antitrust enforcement suffice against AI partnerships, quasi-mergers, and self-preferencing, when do markets need bespoke ex-ante rules: mandated access to compute, data-sharing duties, interoperability, transparency of partnership terms, and merger thresholds that capture quasi-mergers
How should small and developing economies legislate: transplant, adapt, or invent? What can regional enforcement (COMESA, the AfCFTA Competition Protocol) deliver what national authorities cannot, how do states move from norm-takers to norm-makers in AI competition policy
Expected Outcomes
Participants will leave with a shared map of where market power sits in the AI value chain (chips, compute, data, models, distribution) from an African vantage point, connecting global enforcement evidence to African market conditions. The session will produce design options for bespoke AI competition rules suited to small and developing economies: thresholds, obligations, remedies, and institutional models, including regional enforcement. It will generate concrete input into the Kenyan legislative process on the Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2026 and into digital markets work under the AfCFTA Competition Protocol, and pathways for African and Global South authorities to shape international competition norms for AI as norm-makers rather than norm-takers. A public session report will consolidate these outputs and feed into the IGF 2026 record.
Format
Theater
Duration (minutes): 90
Format description: The session moves from a regional enforcer's keynote through two structured panel rounds to an open floor exchange, and it integrates speakers joining online from Europe. Ninety minutes is the minimum needed to move from diagnosis (does AI break the antitrust toolkit?) to design (what should bespoke rules for small and developing economies look like?) while protecting a full open exchange with in-person and online participants. A theater layout suits a moderated panel before a large audience at UNON. The moderator will run timed interventions, direct panelists to respond to one another rather than deliver serial statements, and alternate between the room and the virtual queue during the floor exchange.
Duration (minutes): 90
Format description: The session moves from a regional enforcer's keynote through two structured panel rounds to an open floor exchange, and it integrates speakers joining online from Europe. Ninety minutes is the minimum needed to move from diagnosis (does AI break the antitrust toolkit?) to design (what should bespoke rules for small and developing economies look like?) while protecting a full open exchange with in-person and online participants. A theater layout suits a moderated panel before a large audience at UNON. The moderator will run timed interventions, direct panelists to respond to one another rather than deliver serial statements, and alternate between the room and the virtual queue during the floor exchange.
Hybrid Format: A dedicated online co-moderator will run the virtual room alongside the onsite moderator, merge the in-room and online question queues into a single order, and hold a guaranteed slot for online interventions in the floor exchange. Online panelists will take part in the same panel rounds as onsite panelists, on equal airtime, not in a separate segment.
How will you design the session to ensure the best possible experience for online and onsite participants?
No slide decks. Panelists respond to targeted questions in timed interventions of three to four minutes, circulated in advance and matched to each speaker's enforcement, scholarly, or practice vantage point. The agenda reserves the floor exchange for open discussion, and the moderator will alternate between the room and the online queue throughout it.
Complementary online tools/platforms
The official IGF virtual platform and its chat, managed by the online moderator.
Organizer 1: Linda Bonyo, 🔒UNECA
Speaker 1: Waweru Alexia , Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
Speaker 2: Macmillan Rory, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 4: Helena Malikova, Government, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 2: Macmillan Rory, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 4: Helena Malikova, Government, Intergovernmental Organization
Moderator
Linda Bonyo, Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
Online Moderator
Linda Bonyo, Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
Rapporteur
Linda Bonyo, Intergovernmental Organization, African Group
What will participants gain from attending this session?
