Privacy Policy.

What we collect, and why

Sign the manifesto. If you sign, we store your name and, if you give them, your country and role. Signing is public consent to add your name to the count; you can also tick a box to show your name on the public signatory wall. Lawful basis: your consent.

Share a story or add a post link. We use either only to review and consider featuring it. If you share a story, we forward it once by email to the campaign team and do not store it in a database. If you paste a link to a post you made, we save that link in our review queue so the team can look at it, and we remove it on request or once the campaign ends. Lawful basis: your consent (you chose to submit it).

Public #NotWaiting posts.The campaign also looks at what people post publicly with the hashtag on Instagram, TikTok and X, using a scraping tool (Apify) to find them. That can include a public post’s author name, handle, profile link, caption and engagement counts, exactly as posted publicly. We only use this to curate and, with review, feature strong stories about people building things across Africa. Lawful basis: legitimate interest in running a public storytelling campaign about content you already chose to publish with our hashtag. If you would rather your public post was not curated or featured, contact us and we will remove it, see “Your rights” below.

Tari, the AI writing help.If you tap “Write it with Tari” in the post maker, the text you typed is sent to our server and on to an AI processor, Groq (primary) or Cerebras (fallback), to generate caption suggestions, then sent back to you. It is used only to answer that request, not stored in a database, not used to identify you, and not used to train anyone’s model. See Groq’s data processing addendum and Cerebras’s privacy policy for each processor’s data processing terms. If you never tap Tari, no text is sent for this. Lawful basis: your consent (you chose to use it).

Your finished post image. The post card itself is built in your browser and downloaded by you. We never see it or store it.

Anonymous analytics.If you accept the analytics prompt on the site, we record anonymous events such as page views, post downloads, caption copies and share clicks, so we can see what is working. These events carry no names, no addresses, and none of the text you write, ever. See “Cookies and local storage” below for how this is gated. Lawful basis: your consent.

Spam and abuse protection. Every form on this site briefly checks your IP address against a rate limit, so the same visitor cannot flood a form. This is not stored against your name, only kept for a short rolling window, then discarded. Lawful basis: legitimate interest (keeping the site usable and free of spam).

Cookies and local storage

We keep this to the minimum the site needs, and we ask before anything else runs.

Always on, functional only: your language choice, saved in your browser’s local storage, and, only for the small editorial team, a signed-in session cookie for the admin area. Neither is used to track you around the web or to build a profile.

Only if you pick a language other than English or French:we set a cookie that tells Google Translate which language to show, and its script then loads to translate the page. This never runs unless you actively choose one of those languages from the language menu, see “Google Translate” below.

Only if you accept the analytics prompt:a small on-site banner asks before we turn on anonymous analytics (see above). Nothing analytics-related loads until you accept, and declining is remembered so you are not asked again. You can change your mind any time by clearing your browser’s site data and reloading, which brings the prompt back.

We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Google Translate

You can read the site in other languages using Google Translate. When you choose a machine-translated language, the page text is sent to Google’s translation service to be translated, and is handled under Google’s own privacy policy. If you stay on English or French, no page text is ever sent to Google for this.

Who we share data with

We keep the list of third parties short, and only use each one for the job described above:

• Groq (primary) and Cerebras (fallback), to generate Tari’s caption suggestions from the text you type. Neither trains models on your text.
• Google, to translate the page when you choose to.
• Apify, to find public posts that used the #NotWaiting hashtag.
• Resend, to email us story and post-link submissions (only used if you submit one).
• Amazon Web Services, which hosts this site and, only if you accept the analytics prompt, records the anonymous analytics described above.

None of these are used for advertising, and we do not sell data.

How long we keep it

Manifesto signatures are kept until you ask to be removed or the campaign ends, since the wall is a live public record while the campaign runs. Story and post-link submissions are forwarded once by email and are not kept in a database on this site beyond that. Public posts we curate from #NotWaiting are kept while relevant to the campaign, and removed on request; a post we look at but do not approve is purged within 90 days. Anonymous analytics and CloudWatch RUM events (see “Cookies and local storage” above) are kept for around 30 days, then deleted. We review campaign data at least once a year and, where it is no longer needed, delete it, and in any case at the end of the campaign.

International transfers

This site and the services listed above may process data outside your country, including in the United States. Where that happens, we rely on the safeguards those providers offer for international transfers (such as standard contractual clauses).

Children

#NotWaiting is a general-audience campaign and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from children.

Your rights

Wherever the law gives you these rights, you have the right to:

• Access what we hold about you.
• Rectification, correcting anything that is wrong.
• Erasure, having it deleted, including having your name taken off the signatory wall or a post removed from the Hall of Fame or the wider curation.
• Restriction of how we process it.
• Data portability, receiving it in a portable format.
• Objection to processing we base on legitimate interest, such as curating public #NotWaiting posts.
• Withdrawing consent at any time, for anything we process on the basis of your consent, without affecting anything already done before you withdrew it.

Email communications@africanofilter.org and we will action it. If you email us directly, we use your message and address only to reply to you.

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your data, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk), or your local data protection authority if you are elsewhere.

Social platforms

Our social links lead to third-party platforms such as Instagram, X, Facebook and TikTok. Once you are on those platforms, their own privacy policies apply, not ours.

Changes to this policy

We may update this page as the campaign changes. The date at the top always shows the latest version.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Reach the campaign at communications@africanofilter.org.