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Privacy and Cookie policies

OUR PRIVACY POLICY

Published on 1 October 2021

Your privacy is very important to us. This policy aims to provide information on what personal information we have, how we use it. For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, when we refer to:

you”, we mean the person/s who use, contract for, or show interest in Africell products and services or events, their representatives and any third parties connected to you that you’ve told us about.

we” or “us”, we mean Africell Global Holdings Ltd (“Africell”).

“Africell Group”, Africell and all its direct and indirect subsidiaries from time to time.

Why do we collect your personal information?

We collect information because:

  • You’ve contracted with us. For example, you work for the Africell Group and we need your information to look after you and your employment with us
  • You’ve given us your consent. For example, if you’ve entered a competition, or agreed for us, or specified third parties, to send you direct marketing, offers and perks that are relevant to you;
  • We’ve got a legitimate interest to help us run and grow our business. For example, improving our products and services, developing new ones, telling you or prospective customers about our products and services (unless it’s in a way that requires consent), finding new customers, understanding more about who our customers are and what they like, tailoring our advertising to the right audience/s managing credit and fraud risks, managing our network and complying with our legal and regulatory obligations.
  • The law in various jurisdictions in which the Africell Group operates also requires us to process some information.
  • The information we may have about you may include things like who you are, how you use your Africell products and services, where you use our network, and how you pay for your services.

Who you are may include:

  • Your name, phone number, address, gender, age, interests, etc.
  • Your debit or credit card details, bank details and other payment information.
  • Your interests and preferences.
  • Your documents that help us verify your identity or contact details or your authority to represent an Africell customer.

How you use your Africell products and services may include:

  • Your call, text, surfing and billing records.
  • Details about your usage of any other products we supply to you. This includes the date and time you use them, how long for, where you use them and how much it costs.
  • We don’t look at the content of your messages or listen to your calls (unless you are talking to one of our customer service advisors).

Where you use our network:

  • So we can connect you to our network, and for some of the purposes mentioned in this Privacy Policy, we need to know your location when you make or receive phone calls, messages or use the internet. We call this network location. It works by finding you through nearby phone masts, providing us with a rough location so we can put calls through or connect you to the internet.
  • Your smartphone might also have a Global Positioning System (GPS) location, that’s used by your phone and certain apps. It’s more accurate than network location alone, because it uses satellites.
  • GPS location is different from network location. Look at your phone’s settings to configure it. Remember, if you choose not to share your location, you might not be able to use certain services that need to know where you are for those services to work.

What you do with your Africell account(s):

  • This includes things such as when and how much you top up and pay your bill, or how often and why you access your account with us.

Where do we get your information?

We collect information mainly when you use our products and services. We also record calls for training and monitoring purposes.

For example, we will collect information when:

  • You get in touch with us to ask something.
  • You buy from us – whether it’s in an Africell shop or somewhere else.
  • You enter any surveys, promotions, competitions or prize draws.
  • You make changes to, or close your Africell account.
  • You’ve bought products or services from one of the Join Venture businesses.
  • You submit content, including photographs, or comments to participate in discussion threads.
  • You use any of our networks – mobile, wifi or other Africell products and services.
  • You sign up for a service with us that means we need to check with credit reference and fraud prevention agencies or you sign up for a service with someone else and they need to verify details with us.
  • You apply for a job with us.

We also collect information from other sources, including business directories and other commercially or publicly available sources, for example if you’ve agreed to share data or accept the use of cookies with other sites, such as Google or social media. If we need to conduct a credit check, we will receive information from credit reference agencies. If you take part in market research for us we will also collect information from third party website or social media you access from our sites, in accordance with the privacy policies of those respective websites and social media.

How we use your information

We use and analyse your information to keep in touch with you and to supply and improve our products and services. We will also use your information to tell you about products and services that we think may interest you. Sometimes we’ll combine and anonymise this information so you won’t be identified. You must obtain consent from any third parties whose personal or sensitive information you provide to us in your application for and / or performance of Africell products and services, for us to receive and process that information for those purposes.

In particular, this means using your information to:

Help you and us manage your account, including:

  • Sorting out a payment, put your order through our system or send you an order.
  • Getting in touch with you (e.g. if we need to tell you about any problems with a service).
  • Looking into any complaints or questions you may raise;
  • Telling you if we’ve changed the way a service works or other important information about the products and services you use;
  • Checking whether you qualify for credit or other products, services and offers. We use automated systems to analyse your information to help us make fair and objective decisions about whether we can give you (and members of your household) credit, credit-related services, other similar facilities or insurance. 
  • Tracing and recovering debts, managing credit, detecting and preventing fraud and money laundering
  • Recovering any money you might owe us.
  • Assigning your debt to permitted third parties and look after any credit you might have.
  • To run our business, supply and improve our products and services and develop new ones, including:
  • Looking at markets, writing reports or carrying out research and number crunching. And, if the law allows it, looking at information about you (including the calls you make, your spending, what you use the internet for and where you are when you do it).
  • Managing our network and your use of our network.
  • Improving our (and third party partner) products and services and develop new ones.
  • Complying with legal and regulatory obligations (such as legal obligations to keep details of calls made by customers for a certain period of time, to protect vital interests, national security or comply with requests from legal or enforcement authorities);
  • Prevent fraud, illegal activity and money laundering to minimise our credit and fraud risks and protect you and our business operating the Joint Venture. So that we can manage our relationship with you we may share your data between the other members of the Africell Group. 

To market products and services, including:

  • telling you about a new service that we think may interest you
  • checking what you’re interested in or eligible for, so we can offer (and develop) relevant products and services, and surveys
  • understanding more about you and Africell customers so you only receive marketing which is of interest to you and so we can find an attract new customers who have similar tastes;
  • helping build effective and targeted marketing campaigns to you and similar audiences;
  • sending you information about our products and services (or those from selected third parties we think you’d be interested in) by phone, post, email, text, picture message, online banner advertising, or other ways. For some of this marketing activity we need your consent and, in those circumstances, we will only send you messages if you have asked to receive them. You can update marketing preferences at any time using the link in any marketing communication received.

How we share your information

We may share your information in order to do all the things we’ve described above. We only provide the information they need to perform their services, and they’re only allowed to use it for the purpose that we’ve agreed with them.

This might mean sharing that information with:

  • Our partner companies or agencies and their sub-contractors or prospective partners who help us run and develop our current and future products and services.
  • Other companies in the Africell Group. This includes their respective partners, agents and sub-contractors.
  • Third parties whose services or offers you sign up to and in order for those third parties to mitigate fraud, identity theft, or facilitate a quicker and more secure access to their services or who may market to you.
  • With our partners and contractors for market research and other construction.
  • Third parties with whom we anonymise cookie data (see our Cookies Policy for more detail).
  • Third parties in connection with a corporate reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets or stock, including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings.
  • Credit reference and fraud prevention agencies. When we check your credit score with a credit reference agency, the information that we give them (including details of your credit application and financial details) as well as the fact that we have requested that search will also be recorded by the credit reference agency. We exchange information with credit reference agencies on payment performance and your financial situation on an ongoing basis and this information could be used by us and third parties to make future credit assessment decisions.
  • Other communications companies.
  • New or prospective owners of the Africell Group.

We might also share your information:

With any public authority or law enforcement agency (if they ask for it).

  • To comply with law or regulations, or for possible legal proceedings.
  • If you give us personal information that’s wrong or we find out (or think) you’re responsible for fraud. In these circumstances we might share your information with third parties such as law enforcement agencies, credit reference agencies and other affected third parties.
  • If one of our partners who are processing information for us are compelled to do so by law.
  • If there’s an emergency and we think you or other people are at risk.
  • Why we keep hold of your information
  • We keep information for as long as we need it for the purposes described above. there are certain reasons we have to keep hold of your information.

Your rights

Under the relevant data protection laws of your jurisdiction, you have a number of legal rights in relation to the information that we hold about you, including:

  • The right to request details of the information we have about you.
  • The right to ask that we update your information if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • The right to make a complaint with the with the relevant authorized body if you think that any of your rights have been infringed by us.

If you are an Africell group employee, you can exercise your rights by contacting your relevant head of human resources representative.

Communicating over the internet:

Please remember, any emails or other communications you send over the internet aren’t safe unless they’ve been encrypted. They might go through a few countries before they get to your friend who lives around the corner. Unfortunately, that’s the nature of the internet. If someone gets into your emails without your permission, or your personal information is shared publicly, we can’t accept responsibility. It is out of our control.

This Privacy Policy doesn’t apply to other companies’ websites that you get to through our website. So make sure you’ve read their Privacy Policy before putting your personal information on their site.

Other important information

Please note that if you’re signing up for our products and services there might be extra terms and conditions to look at.

Contact us

If you want to know more about how we use your information or to raise any queries with us in relation to your information, you can contact us.

Cookies

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally. These pieces of information are used to improve services for you through, for example:

  • enabling a service to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times during one task.
  • recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don’t need to do it for every web page requested.
  • measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure they are fast.

Third party cookies

To make it easy for you to use and share our website we may embed features from other websites. Browsing the Africell website may place cookies from these third-party websites on your computer. Africell has no control over these cookies so it is not always possible to list them, and they are liable to change without notifying us.

We may refer to companies, organisations and public bodies and enable access to their websites directly from our website. Each company, organisation or public body operates its own policy regarding the sale of personal data and the use of cookies. If you have a particular interest in, or concern regarding the way your data will be used then you are advised to read the Privacy Statement on the relevant website.