Privacy policy

1. What we hold, and where it comes from

Your account: your name, email address, the password you chose (stored only as a hash we cannot reverse), the language and display currency you prefer, and your phone number if you give us one.

Your organisation: its registered or trading name, its country and city, and the role each colleague holds in it.

Verification: the company documents and director identification a supplier uploads to be verified, and whatever the assessment of them records.

Your trading: sourcing requests, quotes, orders, the messages exchanged about them, documents attached to them, and disputes.

Payments: we do not hold card or mobile money credentials at any point. A payment made through Secure Payment goes to our payment service provider, who collects what they need to take it and tells us only that it happened, for how much, and against which order.

Messaging consent: if you agree to be contacted on WhatsApp we store the exact wording you agreed to, the date, and any later withdrawal. We keep a withdrawal rather than deleting the agreement, because “never asked” and “asked us to stop” must never look alike.

Field visits: where one of our field agents registers or verifies a business in person, we record the agent's device position at the time and the business's address. The position is evidence that a visit happened where it was reported to.

Technical: the pages you open, the approximate location your network suggests, your browser and device type, and the records our servers keep of requests.

2. What we use it for

Running your account and your organisation: signing you in, keeping you signed in, letting colleagues act for the same company, and confirming your email address and phone number are yours.

Running trades: showing a supplier what a buyer asked for, carrying quotes and orders between them, releasing contact details when a trade requires it, raising invoices, and operating Secure Payment and disputes.

Verification and safety: checking a supplier is the registered business it says it is, reviewing listings before they appear, and investigating fraud, abuse or anything unlawful.

Telling you things: confirmations, quotes and orders that need your attention, plan invoices, and service messages. Marketing, where we send it, is separate and you can stop it without losing the service messages.

Improving the platform: understanding which pages people actually use, which we do with measurement you have to agree to first — see section 5.

Meeting our obligations: accounting records, tax, and responding to a lawful request from an authority.

[[LAWFUL BASES — whether this policy states a basis for each purpose, and under which regime, is a decision for review. The purposes above are accurate either way.]]

3. Who sees it

Your counterparty. Trading means being identifiable to the other side: when a buyer sends a request and a supplier quotes for it, each sees who the other is, and the contact details each needs to complete the consignment. This is the point of the marketplace rather than a side effect of it, and it cannot be switched off while trading.

Our staff. Only where their work requires it, and the console records who looked at what.

Our payment service provider, for a payment made through Secure Payment.

Auditors and assessors we appoint, for the documents a verification level rests on.

Service providers who host the platform, deliver our email, and measure usage, each acting on our instructions.

An authority, where the law requires us to produce something.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for anybody else's advertising.

4. Where it goes

Savanna Trade serves suppliers across Africa and buyers worldwide, so data moves across borders by the nature of what the platform does: a Cameroonian supplier's listing is read by a buyer in another country, and their quote goes to them there.

Our hosting and our email are provided from outside Cameroon.

[[INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS — what safeguard this policy claims for transfers, and to which countries, is a decision for review.]]

5. Cookies and measurement

Some cookies are necessary and are set whether or not you agree to anything: the one that keeps you signed in (savanna_refresh), and the two that remember the language and currency you chose (savanna.locale, savanna.currency). If you arrive through a field agent's link we also keep the code from it (savanna.agent) so the agent is still credited if you finish signing up days later.

Measurement is Google Analytics, and it is switched off until you say otherwise. Every consent signal starts denied, so before you answer the banner no analytics cookie is set and nothing we receive identifies you. Decline and it stays that way.

You can change your mind at any time from the banner, and you can clear the cookies in your browser.

6. How long we keep it

Your account and organisation for as long as the account exists, and for a period afterwards in our records and backups.

Trading records — quotes, orders, invoices, payments and disputes — for longer, because they are the evidence of a contract and of money that moved, and because accounting and tax rules require it.

Verification documents for as long as the verification they support is live, and afterwards for as long as we have to be able to show why it was granted.

[[RETENTION PERIODS — the actual number of years for each of the three, which depends on Cameroonian accounting and tax rules and is a decision for review.]]

Closing your account does not erase a trade somebody else was party to. It stops the account being used and removes what is not part of that record.

7. Your choices

You can see and correct most of what we hold from your account settings — your name, contact details, language and currency, and your organisation's details.

You can withdraw WhatsApp consent at any time without losing the emails a trade needs.

You can decline or withdraw analytics consent from the cookie banner.

You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Write to the address at the top of this policy. Deletion is subject to the records we are required to keep, and we will tell you plainly which of those apply rather than refusing in general terms.

[[RIGHTS AND COMPLAINTS — which rights this policy grants, and the authority a complaint can be taken to, is a decision for review. The practical routes above are offered whatever that answer is.]]

8. Security

Passwords are stored only as a hash. Access to the platform's data is limited to staff whose work needs it, and administrative actions are recorded.

We do not ask for your password, and we will never ask you for it by email or on WhatsApp. Nobody from Savanna Trade needs it.

No platform can promise it will never be breached. If one happens and it affects you, we will tell you what happened and what to do about it.

9. Contacting us

Questions about this policy, or a request about your own data, go to support@savannamarketplace.com.

10. Changes

This policy forms part of our terms of use and carries the same version. A change to it is published as a new version of the terms, with its own date, and the version you accepted stays available.