Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

goveranAI ("we", "us", or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our WhatsApp-based agricultural marketplace service.

This policy complies with the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) and Zimbabwe's Data Protection Act.

2. Information We Collect

Information You Provide

• Phone Number: Your WhatsApp phone number (required for service access)
• Name: Your full legal name as it appears on your ID document
• Date of Birth: To verify you are 18 years or older
• Location: Your city/region for matching with local buyers and sellers
• Listing Information: Details about products you list (descriptions, photos, prices, quantities)
• Transaction History: Records of purchases, sales, and payment references
• Farm and Planning Information: Farm district, irrigation access, planting month, land size, budget, transport and market reach, risk preference, crop preferences, and selected recommendations

Optional Verification Information (Sellers)

When verification badges launch, or when a seller opts into early verification, we may collect:

• ID Document: A photo of your national ID or equivalent government-issued photo ID
• Farm Photo: A photo of your farm or produce to review farming activity
• Farm Location: GPS coordinates or location description (optional, helps buyers find local sellers)

Verification photos are stored securely with our image hosting provider (Cloudinary). We maintain audit logs of verification decisions for fraud prevention. Verification is not required to submit a listing today.

Information Collected Automatically

• Usage Data: How you interact with our service
• Device Information: Basic device information from WhatsApp
• Timestamps: When you access and use the service

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• Provide and maintain the goveranAI service
• Process listings and facilitate transactions
• Connect buyers with sellers in your region
• Process payments and refunds
• Send you important service notifications
• Respond to your inquiries and support requests
• Detect and prevent fraud or abuse
• Comply with legal obligations
• Generate crop recommendations and agricultural forecasts
• Estimate likely future crop supply and reduce over-concentration in a single crop
• Improve goveranAI products, scoring models, market research, and decision support
• Create and provide anonymized, combined district-level or national market-intelligence reports to research organizations, farming organizations, suppliers, NGOs, and commercial clients

4. Information Sharing

With Other Users

When a buyer reveals the farmer contact for a listing, the farmer's phone number is shared with that buyer to facilitate the transaction. Farmer contacts are provided free of charge, with no goveranAI contact fee. Farm-planning information used for external market intelligence is shared only in anonymized, combined form and does not include the farmer's name, phone number, or exact farm location.

With Service Providers and Insight Recipients

• Paynow: Payment processing
• Cloudinary: Image storage for listing photos
• WhatsApp/Meta: Message delivery
• Research organizations, farming organizations, suppliers, NGOs, and commercial clients: anonymized, combined agricultural market intelligence

5. Your Rights

Under POPIA (South Africa) and Zimbabwe's Data Protection Act, you have the right to:

6. Pack the Bakkie Game Analytics

Pack the Bakkie (www.goveranai.com/play/pack-the-bakkie) is a free packing game, separate from the WhatsApp marketplace and your marketplace account.

• Random ID: A random ID stored in your browser — not your name, phone number, or marketplace account — counts visits and tracks your progress in the game
• Game Activity: Opening the game, starting, finishing, or giving up on a delivery, hints used, stars earned, sharing the game, and which link brought you in (a channel post, a friend's share, or a direct link)
• Nickname: A display name you choose for the game only, not linked to your marketplace name or phone number

No names, phone numbers, or IP addresses are stored in game analytics. This data is kept for 180 days and then deleted, and is used only to improve the game — never sold or shared.

7. Contact Information

For privacy-related inquiries or to exercise your rights: