The Legal Framework For Electronic Contracts in Ethiopia with Special Emphasis on General Contract Law
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Date
2013-03
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Contracts are obviously the heart of any transaction. The way contracts are concluded and
executed is affected by the societal level of industrial and technological developments.
Modern electronic communications, especially Internet, are widely employed at any
contract phase. But contract laws were legislated at the time when Internet
communications were unknown. As a result, conventional contract laws exhibit legal gap
to regulate modern electronic contracts. In the same fashion, the Ethiopian Civil Code
isn’t comprehensive enough to accommodate electronic contracts. Electronic contracts
produce strange practices to the Civil Code on Contracts in General. Due to that, the
validity of electronic contracts is still in question under the Code. Features of electronic
contracts like consummation of consent, usage of automated agents, attribution of
communications, input errors, time of contract completion, formality requirements,
variation and notice delivery, privity of contract principle, admissibility and parole
evidence rule of electronic records, aren’t addressed by the Code.
Laws necessary to accompany wide usage of electronic contracts are not compatible with
electronic communications in our country. Electronic contracts seek secure
communication on the Internet highway but laws ensuring security of network
communications are inadequate. Laws on consumer protection don’t protect consumers
of electronic contracting. Internet Service Providers are the gateways of electronic
contracting, but their civil liability to users of their functions is still not updated.
Electronic contracting makes the privacy of contracting parties unguaranteed. The
existing privacy protection laws don’t consider new privacy violation mechanisms over
Internet communications. With this in mind, this work is meant to make a humble attempt
at showing the legal gaps in the area and coming up with some points of recommendation
for policy and law reform.
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Legal Framework For Electronic