The Legal and Institutional Framework

The legal protection for consumers from abuse by market actors has passed several stages of development. The earliest protection was based on laws of contract and extra contractual liability. But these private law mechanisms have not been adequate enough in protecting consumers’ interests. Due to this, later on, consumer protection began to be based on criminal law, competition law and regulatory laws of different nature, as well. However, still, the protections based on these laws have their own limitations. To supplement the limitations of these private and public laws in consumer protection, countries began to enact a separate consumer protection regime. Ethiopia enacted a Trade Practice and Consumer Protection Law in 2010 with the same objectives of protecting consumers in the market place.The legal regimes of this law include the scope of application of the law which applies to any transaction in goods and services. Beside this, the rights of consumers and obligations of business persons are basic substantive characteristics of this law.