A quiet policy update made by Meta in October last year has snowballed into a full-blown antitrust confrontation spanning 21 African nations, and the outcome could reshape how global tech giants operate across the continent. At the heart of the dispute is a change Meta made to its WhatsApp Business Solution Terms on 15 October 2025. The update effectively barred third-party artificial intelligence providers (including widely-used tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot) from accessing the WhatsApp Business API. At the same time, Meta’s own AI product retained full access. For businesses and developers across Africa who had built customer-facing AI services on WhatsApp, it was a sudden and costly dead end.
The COMESA Competition and Consumer Commission (CCCC), the competition watchdog for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, formally launched an investigation on 17 February 2026, following a complaint filed by AdLegal International, a Ugandan campaign group. The commission’s chief executive, Willard Mwemba, stated that the regulator has “reasonable cause to suspect” that Meta holds a dominant position in the common market, and that the API changes are likely to substantially lessen competition across it.
Why WhatsApp Is Not Just a Chat App Here
To understand the stakes, it helps to appreciate just how deeply embedded WhatsApp is in Africa’s digital economy. Across COMESA’s 21 member state it functions as a primary channel for e-commerce, customer service, logistics coordination, and payments. Unlike in Western markets, where businesses might distribute across multiple digital platforms, for many African entrepreneurs and startups, WhatsApp is the platform. Full stop.
Kenyan AI startups, many of which build multilingual chatbots tailored to local languages and business contexts, relied on API access to serve their customers. The restriction means businesses that had integrated third-party AI tools now have to rebuild everything for web or SMS platforms. This is a costly, time-consuming setback that disproportionately hurts smaller players.
A Pattern Regulators Are Now Connecting
Meta has not been without a defence. The company maintains that third-party AI chatbots placed excessive strain on its infrastructure, which was never designed to support them, and that the policy change was necessary to protect platform integrity. It has contested similar rulings elsewhere.
But regulators are noticing a pattern. The current probe mirrors a 2022 investigation by the South African Competition Commission, which found that Meta had violated antitrust regulations by blocking the government’s GovChat from using the WhatsApp Business API. More recently, Brazil’s antitrust body issued an injunction against the policy in January 2026, though Meta appealed and overturned it. Italy’s competition authority ordered an emergency suspension of the policy in December 2025. And earlier this month, the European Commission formally charged Meta with breaching EU antitrust rules over the same issue.
COMESA’s probe comes days after the European Commission officially charged Meta with breaching EU antitrust regulations by restricting third-party AI assistants on WhatsApp. The convergence of scrutiny from both European and African regulators in the same month signals that this is no longer a localised complaint but a coordinated global reckoning.
A Test Case for African Regulation
The CCCC has been quick to note that launching an investigation is not a finding of wrongdoing, and that Meta will be given a full opportunity to respond. Stakeholders have been invited to submit representations by 16 March 2026.
What makes the case particularly significant is its timing. It marks one of the first major tests of COMESA’s newly enforced competition framework against a global technology firm. The commission was recently rebranded and given expanded powers under the COMESA Competition and Consumer Protection Regulations 2025.
Whether Africa’s regulators can hold their own against one of the world’s most powerful technology companies remains to be seen. But the message being sent is that the continent’s digital markets are no longer ungoverned territory, and the era of consequence-free platform dominance may be drawing to a close.
