News
How CI and OSISA strengthened consumer protection in Southern Africa
31 Oct 2011
The project
Strengthening consumer protection in three African countries
for social and economic justice has ended. The OSISA
project funded work by three member organisations:
Consumer Association of Malawi (CAMA),
Associação de Defesa do Consumidor de Moçambique (DECOM) and
Zambia Consumers Association (ZACA). The project helped to
strengthen capacity for consumer rights protection in Malawi,
Mozambique and Zambia. The project empowered members to advocate
for effective consumer protection laws in their countries to
address current economic justice challenges that consumers face
every day.
The full list of successes that were achieved over the two
years:
- Lobbying for the Consumer Protection Legislation (CPL) act in
Zambia, where the law was passed in September 2010 with much
contribution from ZACA
- Lobbying for the law to operate in Malawi and set up the
institutions to support implementation
- Creating consumer awareness of the new law in Mozambique
- National stakeholder workshops held in Malawi, Mozambique and
Zambia
- Members carried out consumer education and awareness campaigns
in their local constituents using the media, distributing education
materials and training volunteers, thus encouraging consumers to
continue to demand their rights
- Development and publication of CPL advocacy guidelines
- Development of a research document on the status of CPL in
Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, which assisted these countries to
initiate CPL development processes in their countries, and provides
useful information
- Strengthening institutional and operational capacity of
partners through websites and consumer complaints database
development
- Hosting of CPL resources on CI's and partners' websites.