This book analyses the legal approach to personal data taken by different fields of law. An increasing number of business models in the digital economy rely on personal data as a key input. In exchange for sharing their data, online users benefit from personalized and innovative services. But companies' collection and use of personal data raise questions about privacy and fundamental rights. Moreover, given the substantial commercial and strategic value of personal data, their accumulation, control and use may raise competition concerns and negatively affect consumers. To establish a legal framework that ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data while at the same time providing an open and level playing field for businesses to develop innovative data-based services is a challenging task.With this objective in mind and against the background of the uniform rules set by the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the contributions to this book examine the significance and legal treatment of personal data in competition law, consumer protection law, general civil law and intellectual property law. Instead of providing an isolated analysis of the different areas of law, the book focuses on both synergies and tensions between the different legal fields, exploring potential ways to develop an integrated legal approach to personal data.

This book focuses on market law and policy in sub-Saharan Africa, showing how markets can be harnessed by poorer and developing economies to help make the markets work for them: to help them integrate into the world economy and provide a better standard of living for their people while preserving their values of inclusive development. It explores uses of power both by dominant firms, often multinationals, and incumbent governments and cronies, to ring-fence their market positions and deprive rivals - often the indigenous people - from fair access to markets and highlights how competition authorities are pushing back and winning fair access, lowering prices of goods and services especially for the poorer population. The book also examines the next level up - regionalism - and provides the facts that show how regionalism has so far failed to meet its promise of freeing markets from cross-border restraints by large firms that operate across national borders. On the more technical side, the book takes a deep look at the competition policies of sets of nations in sub-Saharan Africa - West, South-eastern, and South. It examines the performance of the competition authorities of particular nations, including how they handle cartels, monopolies, and mergers; their standards of illegality, and their methodologies for incorporating public interest values into their analyses. Observing the good works by a number of the national competition authorities, the book is optimistic about the role of the national competition authorities in protecting the people from abuses of economic power, and, perhaps in the future, the role of regional authorities and less formal networks in promoting an African voice in defence of competition.