Strengthening Consumer Protection in Three African
Countries for Social and Economic Justice
CI/OSISA two year project ends
The project Strengthening Consumer Protection in Three
African countries for Social and Economic Justice ended in
August 2011. The OSISA project funded work in three member
organisations
Consumer Association of Malawi (CAMA),
Associação de Defesa do Consumidor de Moçambique (DECOM) and
Zambia Consumers Association (ZACA) 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 following
successes 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
CI is grateful to OSISA for this funding which enabled members
to advocate for the development, implementation and enforcement of
consumers laws in their countries and looks forward to building on
this relationship established with OSISA.
For further details of the project and publications please
contact the Africa office staff, Robert email; rmichel@consint.org and Cathy
email; crutivi@consint.org