Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Africoders provides learning, Builder Passports, challenges, collaboration, opportunities, experts, Business, and developer tools. Privacy questions: privacy@africoders.com.

2. Information we collect

Account and profile

Display name, username, email, password (hashed), optional account/certificate name, persona/onboarding answers, headline, skills, location, bio, links (e.g. GitHub), Passport projects, availability, selected Africoders avatar identifier, and similar profile fields you choose to provide. Profile photographs are not collected — avatars come from Africoders’ provided avatar collection only.

Product activity

Course progress, challenge submissions, collaboration applications, opportunity applications, messages metadata needed to deliver Inbox, expert bookings, billing events, and support tickets.

Technical and device data

IP address, browser/app version, device type, approximate region, cookies and similar identifiers, crash diagnostics (when enabled), and security logs.

Payments

We do not store full card numbers. Payment processors handle card data; we receive status, amounts, and references needed for entitlements and receipts.

3. How we use information

• Provide and secure the Builder Network: accounts, feed, messages, Passports, learning, challenges, jobs, marketplace, and related apps.
• Personalise home modules, Aurora (website assistant) coaching context, and Africoders AI on Telegram or WhatsApp when you use those channels, based on persona and progress.
• Process payments, prevent fraud, and enforce Acceptable Use.
• Communicate service messages (security, billing, booking). Marketing email only where permitted and with unsubscribe.
• Improve products using aggregated analytics when you allow analytics cookies (web) or in-app privacy choices (mobile).
• Comply with law and respond to lawful requests.

4. Passport visibility and discovery

You control whether your Builder Passport is public or private. Public Passports may appear in discovery for signed-in members and, where you allow indexing, in limited public SEO contexts. Private Passports are not listed for guests. Community feeds and member chats are not a public open directory.

4a. Public identity and Africoders Avatars

Africoders is privacy-first: you are known primarily by what you contribute, not by how much personal information you reveal. Public community identity typically includes your display name, username, and selected Africoders avatar. Display names may be pseudonymous and do not have to be your legal name.

You are not required to use a real photograph. Profile avatars come only from Africoders’ curated avatar collection. User-uploaded photos, camera captures, and arbitrary image URLs are not supported for profile identity.

Private account information (such as email, phone where collected, and account/certificate name) is separate from your public profile. Certain legal, payment, marketplace, or certificate functions may still require real identity information held privately by Africoders.

5. Sharing

We do not sell your personal data. We may share:

• With employers or collaborators you choose — e.g. opportunity applications, collaboration applications, expert session briefs.
• Service providers — hosting, email delivery, analytics (with consent), payment processors, error monitoring — under contracts that limit use.
• AI Assist providers — when you deliberately use AI Assist (drafting help or Learn with AI), we send only the limited content needed for that request (for example your draft and relevant post/comment excerpts) to an external AI provider so the feature can run. AI Assist is optional. We aim to minimise what is sent and do not intentionally include passwords, session tokens, private messages, or admin notes. See section 5a.
• Legal and safety — when required by law or to protect users and the platform.
• Business transfers — if we reorganise or sell assets, with notice where required.

5a. AI Assist and external AI processing

Africoders offers optional AI Assist features (for example improving a draft, suggesting a reply, or explaining a post privately). When you choose to use these features, Africoders processes limited, relevant content through an external AI service provider (currently OpenAI) solely to generate the suggestion or explanation you requested.

• What may be processed: text you typed into a composer, and short excerpts of the post/comment context needed for the action — not your entire Africoders activity history.
• What we do not intentionally send: passwords, authentication tokens, email addresses or phone numbers we can detect and redact, private direct messages, unrelated drafts, or internal moderation notes.
• Why: to provide the AI Assist capability you requested.
• Control: AI Assist is optional. You decide whether to use it and whether to publish any suggestion. Learn explanations are private by default and are not posted unless you deliberately place text into a comment composer and publish it yourself.
• Provider: the external provider processes the submitted snippets under its own terms and privacy policy. Africoders does not claim that the provider will never retain data beyond what its product terms describe.

Questions: privacy@africoders.com.

6. International processing

Infrastructure and vendors may process data in multiple countries. We use appropriate safeguards for cross-border transfers where required (contractual clauses, processor agreements).

7. Retention

We keep account data while your account is active. After deletion requests we remove or anonymise personal data within a reasonable period, except records we must keep for legal, security, or financial reasons (e.g. invoices, fraud logs). Operational analytics events are pruned on a schedule; see Cookie Policy for consent retention.

8. Security

We use encryption in transit, access controls, hashed passwords, and monitoring. No system is perfect — please use a unique password and enable available account protections. Report suspected breaches to hello@africoders.com.

9. Your rights and choices

• Access and update profile data in settings.
• Request a copy of your data or deletion of your account (subject to legal holds).
• Control Passport visibility and marketing preferences.
• Manage cookies via Cookie settings.
• Object to or restrict certain processing where applicable law provides that right.

Email privacy@africoders.com to exercise rights we cannot complete in-product. We may need to verify your identity.

10. Account and data deletion

You can delete your Africoders account or request deletion of selected personal data.

Account deletion

Use africoders.com/account/delete (also available in Settings and in the mobile app under Privacy & Security). Steps: sign in → request deletion → confirm identity → confirm via email link. Deletion then runs immediately with no grace period.

Deleted or anonymised: profile identity, credentials, OAuth links, sessions, API tokens, device tokens, private preferences, and unattached personal media.

May be retained: invoices/purchases for accounting, moderation/security logs, shared community posts/comments shown as “Deleted user”, and applications already submitted to employers.

Partial data deletion

Without closing your account, request category-based deletion at africoders.com/privacy/delete-data (profile photo, optional profile fields, connected social accounts, device tokens, unattached media, opportunity application drafts).

Support: privacy@africoders.com.

11. Children

You must meet the minimum age in our Terms (generally 16+, or older where local law requires). Student features are designed with parental guidance in mind; parents should review the Student Hub parent guide. We do not knowingly collect data from children below the permitted age — contact us to delete if you believe we have.

12. Changes

We may update this policy. Material changes will be reflected by the “Last updated” date and, when appropriate, an in-product notice. Continued use after updates constitutes acceptance where permitted by law.

13. Contact

Privacy: privacy@africoders.com. General support: hello@africoders.com. Or use Contact.