Privacy notice

1. Who is responsible for your information

SmartAgri-Africa (Pty) Ltd — trading as Smart Agri Africa, and referred to in this notice as “SAA”, “we” or “us” — is the responsible party for the personal information described here, meaning we determine why and how it is processed.

Registered entity

SmartAgri-Africa (Pty) Ltd
Registration number 2023/818396/07

Address

International Business Gateway
New Rd, Midridge Park
Midrand, 1685
South Africa

Information Officer

Tommie Martinson
tmartinson@smartagriafrica.com

Any question about this notice, or any request in terms of section 8 below, should go to the Information Officer at the address above.

2. What this notice covers

This notice covers the personal information we collect through this website — which is, in practice, the enquiry form on our contact page, plus the technical information any web server unavoidably sees.

It does not cover the FarmSwitch platform itself. If you are a farmer, funder or programme user with a FarmSwitch account, the information held in that platform is governed separately by the agreement under which your organisation uses it.

3. What we collect, and why

Information you give us

When you submit the enquiry form we collect the fields on it: your name, organisation, email address, phone number, the type of enquiry you select, the hectares involved, and the message you write.

We use these for one purpose: to read your enquiry and reply to it, and to have the follow-up conversation you are asking for. We do not use them for marketing lists, we do not sell them, and we do not share them with anyone outside the recipients described in section 5.

Supplying this information is voluntary. The consequence of not supplying it is simply that we cannot reply — you are welcome to email or phone us directly instead, using the addresses on the contact page.

Information collected automatically

• Your IP address, processed transiently to rate-limit the enquiry form so it cannot be abused as a relay for spam. It is held in the server's memory for no more than ten minutes and is not written to any database. If a submission is blocked as automated, the address is recorded in our server logs.
• Standard request information — the page requested, the response status and how long it took — written to server logs so we can tell whether the site is working. These logs do not contain the contents of your enquiry.

The lawful basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in keeping the site available and free of abuse, under section 11(1)(f) of POPIA.

Cookies and analytics

This site sets no cookies, and carries no analytics, advertising or tracking scripts. There is nothing to consent to and no preferences to manage, because we are not collecting behavioural data about you.

One third-party request does occur: our typefaces are served by Google Fonts, so loading a page reveals your IP address and browser details to Google, whose own privacy terms then apply. We are noting this because it is the only external request the site makes; we intend to self-host the fonts and remove it.

4. Our lawful basis for processing

We rely on:

• Your consent (section 11(1)(a)) — you choose to complete and submit the form.
• Legitimate interests (section 11(1)(f)) — replying to a business enquiry you initiated, and protecting the site from abuse.

Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time by telling us so. That does not affect processing already carried out, and we may still need to retain correspondence where the law requires it.

5. Who receives your information

An enquiry submitted through this site is emailed directly to named members of our team — currently the addresses published on our contact page. It is not written to a database, a CRM or a marketing platform. The email is the record.

Two categories of third party are necessarily involved:

• Our email provider, which transmits and stores that email as our operator under section 20 of POPIA, and processes it only on our instruction.
• Our hosting provider, which runs the server this site is served from.

Cross-border transfer. Mainstream email and hosting providers operate data centres outside South Africa, so your enquiry may be stored or processed abroad. Where that happens we rely on section 72 of POPIA — the recipient is subject to laws or binding agreements providing protection substantially similar to POPIA's principles.

6. How long we keep it

We keep enquiry correspondence for as long as needed to deal with the matter, and then as ordinary business correspondence. Where an enquiry does not lead to a working relationship, we aim to delete it within 24 months of the last contact. Where it does, it becomes part of the client record and is retained under the terms of that relationship and any applicable statutory retention period.

7. How we protect it

• The site is served over HTTPS, so the form contents are encrypted in transit.
• The enquiry is relayed to our mailbox over an authenticated, encrypted SMTP connection.
• There is no website database. Nothing you submit is stored on this server — which removes an entire category of risk rather than merely defending against it.
• Access to the receiving mailboxes is limited to the individuals concerned and protected by our normal account controls.

These are the safeguards required by section 19 of POPIA. No system is perfectly secure, and we would tell you — and the Information Regulator — if a compromise affected your information, as section 22 requires.

8. Your rights

Under POPIA you may:

• Ask what we hold about you, and be given a copy (section 23).
• Have it corrected or deleted where it is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, misleading or obtained unlawfully (section 24).
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests (section 11(3)).
• Withdraw consent you previously gave.
• Complain to the Information Regulator, or to a court.

To exercise any of these, write to our Information Officer at the address in section 1. We will respond as soon as reasonably possible. There is a prescribed process and form for a formal access request, and we will point you to it if that is the route you want.

9. Complaints to the regulator

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your information, you may complain to:

The Information Regulator (South Africa)

JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001
inforegulator.org.za
Please use the complaint form and contact details published on the Regulator's own site, as these change from time to time.

10. Children

This is a business-to-business site and we do not knowingly collect the personal information of children. If you believe a child has submitted information through this form, tell us and we will delete it.

11. Changes to this notice

If we change how we handle personal information — adding analytics, a database behind the form, or a newsletter, for example — we will update this notice and change the date at the top of it before doing so, not after.