Privacy Notice.

This notice explains what personal information the Africa Energy Technology Centre holds about you when you use theaetc.org, why we hold it, who else sees it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do about it.

It covers this website and the enquiries sent through it. The Africa Energy Technology Conference is run by the same institution, and has its own privacy notice on aetconference.com covering registration, passes, payment and the conference itself.

The Short Version

• There are no accounts on this website and nothing to buy. We hold nothing about you unless you send it to us.

• An enquiry tells us your name, your email address, what you are interested in and what you wrote. We use it to reply, and it is deleted two years later.

• We set no advertising cookies and no social media trackers, and we do not follow you to other websites.

• We count visits without cookies and without keeping anything that identifies you.

• A few suppliers help us run this website. Each one is named below, and some of them are outside Ghana.

• You can ask to see, correct or delete what we hold by writing to [email protected].

Who We Are

The Africa Energy Technology Centre ("the Centre", "we", "us") is a company limited by guarantee in Ghana, and is the controller of the personal information collected through theaetc.org under Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843). Where the UK or EU General Data Protection Regulation applies to you, we are the controller for that purpose too.

• Address. 11 Nmai Street, Adenta SSNIT Flats, Accra, Ghana.

• Email. [email protected], with "Privacy" in the subject line.

What We Collect, and Why

When You Read a Page

Reading this website asks nothing of you. Our host serves the page and, as any web server must, handles the request in order to answer it and to keep the site standing. We keep no record of our own of who read what, and we build no profile from the pages you visit.

When You Send an Enquiry

The form on this website is the one way to write to the Centre from here. It covers general enquiries, partnership, membership interest, the three national initiatives, mentorship and media. When you send it, we collect:

• your name;

• your email address;

• the organisation you name, if you give one;

• the kind of enquiry you chose, and the membership tier where you chose one;

• what you wrote;

• the page you sent it from, so that we know which pages bring which enquiries;

• the date and time it arrived.

We use this to answer you, and to keep a record of who the Centre is in conversation with. Nothing more: an enquiry does not put you on a mailing list, and we do not use it to advertise to you.

Before the form is sent, you confirm that the Centre may use these details to reply. We record which version of this notice you agreed to, and when, so that what you were told is never in doubt.

Keeping the Form Open to People

Three checks stand in front of the form. All of them are there to keep it usable, not to learn anything about you.

• A field nobody can see. If it comes back filled in, the sender is a machine.

• How long the page was open before the form was sent. A form sent faster than anyone could read it is refused.

• Cloudflare Turnstile, which confirms that a person is sending the form. It is a check, not a tracker, and it does not follow you to other websites.

Behind all three, the database limits how many enquiries one sender may make in an hour. To do that it stores a keyed, one-way fingerprint of the network address the enquiry came from. We do not keep the address itself, and the fingerprint cannot be turned back into one.

When You Download a Publication

The Centre's reports, briefs and concept notes are files served from our own storage. We do not ask who you are before you download one, and a download is never attached to a person.

When You Write to Us Directly

If you write to [email protected] instead of using the form, your message and your address sit in the Centre's mailbox, which runs on Google Workspace, and stay for as long as the correspondence needs.

What We Do Not Collect

• No accounts, no passwords, no sign-in. There is nothing here to register for.

• No payment details. Nothing on this website is sold, and membership interest is an expression of interest, not a purchase.

• No advertising identifiers, no social media pixels, no tracking across other websites.

• We do not ask for passport or identity numbers, financial details or health information, and you should not send them through this form.

Why We Are Allowed to Use It

• Your consent, for using the details in your enquiry to reply to you. You give it on the form, and you may withdraw it at any time by writing to us. Withdrawing it does not undo what was done while it stood.

• Our legitimate interests, in keeping this website working, in keeping the form free of automated abuse, and in holding an institutional record of the conversations the Centre is in. We have weighed those interests against yours, and we take nothing we do not need.

• The law, where we are required to keep or to disclose something.

Who Else Sees It

Enquiries are read by the Centre's own team, through a staff console that requires a second step at sign-in. They are not sold, and they are not passed to anyone for their own purposes.

These suppliers handle information on our behalf, each under a contract that lets them use it only for what we ask:

• Supabase, in London, United Kingdom. Our database and file storage: the enquiries themselves, the pages you read and the publications you download.

• Vercel, in London, United Kingdom, served worldwide. Runs this website, and counts visits.

• Cloudflare, worldwide. Serves the Centre's photographs from media.aetconference.com, and provides Turnstile, the check on the form.

• SendGrid, in the United States. Sends the Centre's team the notification that your enquiry has arrived.

• Google Workspace, worldwide. The Centre's email, when you write to us and when we reply.

Sending Information Outside Ghana

Some of those suppliers handle information outside Ghana, as the list shows. When information leaves Ghana we make sure it stays protected, through our contract with each supplier and the safeguards the law requires. Where UK or EU data protection law applies to you, we rely on the standard contractual clauses approved for that purpose, or on a finding that the destination protects information adequately.

How Long We Keep It

• An enquiry is deleted two years after it arrives. A job runs every night and removes the ones that have reached that age. Ask us to delete yours sooner and we will.

• The record of what you agreed to, and the one-way network fingerprint, belong to the enquiry and are deleted with it.

• Email you send us directly stays in the Centre's mailbox for as long as the correspondence needs, and is then deleted.

• Visit counts are figures rather than records about people, and are kept while they are useful.

Your Rights

You may ask us:

• for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and how we use it;

• to correct anything that is wrong or incomplete;

• to delete it, where we no longer need it and have no other lawful reason to keep it;

• to stop or limit what we do with it, or to object to it;

• for a copy of what you gave us, in a common, machine-readable format;

• to withdraw a consent you gave.

Write to [email protected] from the address we hold for you, or tell us how we can satisfy ourselves that it is you. We answer within 30 days, and it costs nothing. If we cannot do what you ask, we will tell you why.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, tell us first so that we can put it right. You may also complain to Ghana's Data Protection Commission at dataprotection.org.gh. If you live in the United Kingdom or the European Union, you may complain to the data protection authority where you live.

How We Protect It

• Everything between your browser and this website travels encrypted.

• The enquiries are not reachable through the website's public interface at all. One database function writes an enquiry, and it is the only way in; the staff console is the only way to read one.

• Signing in to that console takes a second step as well as an address.

• Members of staff see only what their role allows, and what they change is recorded.

• Photographs lose their location and camera data when they are processed, before they ever reach a browser.

Children

This website is written for governments, institutions, companies and working professionals, and it is not aimed at children. We do not knowingly collect information about anyone under 18 through it. The Centre's youth programmes run with the schools, universities and partners taking part, under their own arrangements. If you believe a child has sent us details through this website, write to us and we will delete them.

Other Websites

This website links to the Africa Energy Technology Conference, to the Africa Energy Youth Forum, to the Intra-African Energy Trade & Investment Forum, and to governments, partners and member organisations. Once you follow a link you are on somebody else's website, where their privacy notice applies and this one does not.

Changes to This Notice

When this notice changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change affects what we do with information you have already sent us, we will say so plainly rather than leave it to be noticed.