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Privacy Policy

Effective as of October 7, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how CropSense AI (also known as CropSense Agri-Solutions & Services) ("CropSense", "we", "us") and CipherSense AI Technologies Limited (joint controller, registered with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission as a Data Controller and Processor under registration number NDPC/DCP/13640) collect, store, use, and disclose personal information through the CropSense applications and websites (cropsense.africa and its subdomains), CropSense Advisory on WhatsApp, the CropSense enterprise portals and Developer API, and related services and goods (together, the "Services").

The Services include crop monitoring and farm analytics, CropSense Advisory (AI farm advice on WhatsApp), YieldRank™ (agricultural credit-risk intelligence), YieldSecure™ (parametric crop insurance intelligence) and YieldPay™ (verified agricultural payments). We serve farmers and cooperatives; banks, digital lenders, microfinance institutions, insurers and reinsurers; agribusiness aggregators and outgrower schemes; governments, NGOs and development programs; and students and researchers, across all African countries. This Privacy Policy applies to users and institutional customers wherever they are located.

1. Acceptance of Privacy Policy and Legal Bases

By using the Services you acknowledge this Privacy Policy. We process personal information on one or more of the following legal bases: your consent; the performance of a contract with you or with the organization you work with; our legitimate interests in operating, securing and improving the Services, where those interests are not overridden by your rights; and compliance with legal obligations. Where we rely on consent, including for processing that involves automated decision-making, you may withdraw it at any time by deleting your profile, stopping your use of CropSense Advisory, or contacting us as described in Section 14. Withdrawing consent does not affect processing that took place before you withdrew it. If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you should not use the Services. Where your information is submitted to us by a partner organization rather than by you directly, Section 3.7 explains how this Privacy Policy applies to you.

2. Changes to Privacy Policy

We may change, amend, or update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Where changes materially affect your rights, we will tell you by email, by WhatsApp message, through a notice on our website, or by asking you to accept the updated policy. Please review this page regularly. Continued use of the Services after the updated Privacy Policy's effective date means you accept the amended Privacy Policy.

3. Data We Collect About You

We collect personal and non-personal information to provide and improve the Services. The information we collect depends on which Services you use and whether you use them directly or through an organization you work with.

3.1 Personal Information

Information you provide to us directly includes:

  • Contact Information: Name, email address, phone number, mailing address
  • Account Information: Username and password, or the name and email address we receive from Google if you sign in with Google
  • Professional Information: Farm/business name, job title, organization, agricultural specialization
  • Payment Information: Billing address and payment method details for subscriptions (processed securely through third-party payment processors; we do not store full payment card details)
  • Communication Data: Messages, feedback, contact and demo request forms, and correspondence with our team

3.2 Agricultural and Operational Data

  • Farm Data: Location coordinates, field boundaries, crop types, varieties, planting dates and crop cycles
  • Soil and Field Observations: Soil characteristics from soil maps, soil tests or field observations, field activities, and observations recorded by you or by field agents
  • Harvest Data: Yield information, quality metrics, harvest dates and volumes
  • Financial Data: Production costs, revenue figures, input purchases and other farm records (if provided)

3.3 CropSense Advisory (WhatsApp)

When you use CropSense Advisory on WhatsApp, we collect:

  • Your WhatsApp phone number and profile name
  • The content of your conversations with CropSense, including text messages, photos and voice notes, and the replies and alerts we send you
  • Your preferred language
  • The farm details you share with us, such as your farm location, crops and planting dates, which form your "Farm Context"

You can ask CropSense Advisory questions before you register a farm. In that case we process your phone number, profile name and messages to answer you. Once you register a farm, we combine your messages with your Farm Context, satellite, weather and soil data to personalize advice and send proactive alerts.

3.4 Insurance and Payment Data

  • YieldSecure™: When an insurer or financing institution uses YieldSecure, we process insured farm boundaries, policy and coverage details, trigger thresholds, the satellite, weather and agronomic evidence for each policy, trigger events and payout calculations.
  • YieldPay™: When an institution uses YieldPay to pay farmers or agricultural workers, we process recipient details such as name, phone number, mobile money account or bank account details, the farm event or decision that authorized the payment, payment instructions, and payment status and confirmation records.

3.5 Technical Information

Information collected automatically when you use our websites and applications includes:

  • Device Information: IP address, browser type, operating system, device identifiers
  • Usage Data: Pages visited, time spent on site, click patterns, feature usage
  • Location Data: GPS coordinates from mobile devices (with your permission)
  • Cookies and Analytics: Information collected through cookies and similar technologies, including Google Analytics. Strictly necessary cookies are always active; analytics cookies are used according to the choices you make in our cookie settings.

3.6 Third-Party Information

We receive information from third-party sources and treat it in line with this Privacy Policy:

  • Weather Data: Information from meteorological services and weather data providers
  • Market Data: Commodity prices and market trends from agricultural data providers
  • Satellite Imagery: Crop monitoring data from satellite and aerial imaging services, such as the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 mission
  • Sign-in Providers: Your name and email address from Google, if you choose to sign in with Google

3.7 Data Submitted by Partners on Your Behalf

Information about you may be submitted to CropSense by an extension agent, cooperative, agribusiness aggregator, outgrower scheme, financial institution, insurer, NGO, or government agency that you work with ("Partner"), including as part of a digital farmer registry, remote farm monitoring, geo-tagged crop profiling, an insurance program, a payment program, or a similar program. This can happen even if you have never created a CropSense account or visited our applications or websites yourself.

Where a Partner submits your information to CropSense, the Partner is responsible for having a lawful basis, including any necessary consent, for collecting and sharing your information, and for giving you notice that your farm data will be processed by CropSense and, where applicable, shared with the Partner's own customers or funders, such as a financial institution assessing your eligibility for a loan as described in Section 10.1. CropSense processes this information on the Partner's instructions and treats it in line with this Privacy Policy.

If you were enrolled by a Partner and want to know what information CropSense holds about you, correct it, or have it deleted, you can exercise the rights described in Section 9 by contacting us at the details in Section 14, even if you do not have a CropSense account. We may direct your request to the relevant Partner where it is better placed to resolve it, but will not use that as a reason to refuse to respond.

3.8 Sponsorship Program

If you apply to the CropSense Sponsorship Program, we collect the information in your application to assess your eligibility. If you are sponsored, we share your name and basic profile details with the donor who sponsors you. We do not share your farm data, advisory conversations or other information with donors.

4. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

  • Provide and Maintain the Services: Operating crop monitoring, farm analytics, farm records, reports and the enterprise portals and Developer API
  • Provide Farm Advice and Alerts: Answering your questions on WhatsApp, diagnosing crop problems from photos and voice notes, and sending proactive weather, pest, crop-stress and timing alerts
  • Generate Risk Intelligence: Producing YieldRank™ credit scores and risk factors, and monitoring financed farms through the crop cycle (see Section 10)
  • Support Insurance Programs: Monitoring insured farms, detecting YieldSecure™ trigger events and calculating payouts for insurers (see Section 10)
  • Facilitate Payments: Creating YieldPay™ payment instructions tied to verified farm events and recording payment confirmations (see Section 10)
  • Support Programs and Reporting: Maintaining farmer registries, tracking program participation and outcomes, and producing auditable records, traceability and sustainability reporting for Partners, buyers and funders
  • Improve and Personalize the Services: Understanding usage patterns and developing tailored products, services, features, and functionality
  • Train and Improve Our Models: Developing, training and evaluating the AI and machine learning models behind the Services (see Section 4.1)
  • Communicate with You: Sending updates, security alerts, technical notices, confirmations, invoices, and administrative messages. We may also send marketing communications; you can opt out at any time
  • Customer Support: Responding to inquiries, offering support, and resolving issues
  • Research and Development: Performing research and analysis on agricultural and market trends and improving the accuracy of our insights
  • Security and Fraud Prevention: Preventing fraud and payment leakage, detecting security incidents, and protecting the Services and users
  • Legal Compliance: Complying with applicable laws, regulations, legal processes, and government requests
  • Enforcing Our Terms and Policies: Enforcing our Terms of Use and other agreements

We will not use your personal information for purposes that are incompatible with those above without your consent, unless the law requires or permits it.

4.1 Artificial Intelligence and Model Training

CropSense uses artificial intelligence throughout the Services. Our agronomy knowledge base is fine-tuned using frontier large language models, including models from OpenAI (GPT) and Google (Gemini) and open models such as Meta's Llama. When you use CropSense Advisory, your messages, photos and voice notes, together with relevant Farm Context, may be processed by these model providers, acting on our behalf, to generate responses.

We use farm-level data, including satellite observations, field observations, farm records and observed outcomes such as yields and payment or repayment events, to train, calibrate and evaluate our own models, so that forecasts, advice and risk assessments become more accurate over time. Where we use this data for model training, we limit it to what is needed, remove direct identifiers such as names and phone numbers where possible, and protect it as described in Section 7. You can ask us not to use your personal information for model training by contacting us as described in Section 14.

Aggregated and anonymized data that can no longer reasonably be associated with an identified or identifiable person may be used for any business purpose, including research, benchmarking and large-scale model training.

5. How We Share Your Information

5.1 We Do Not Sell Personal Information

CropSense does not sell, rent, or trade your personal information or farm data to third parties.

5.2 Authorized Sharing

We share information only in the following circumstances:

  • Service Providers: With vendors that process data on our behalf, including cloud hosting and data storage providers, AI model providers (see Section 4.1), WhatsApp (operated by Meta) for CropSense Advisory messages, payment processors for subscriptions, customer support and communication tools, website form providers, Google Analytics, Google Translate, and monitoring services
  • Lenders and Insurers, With Your Permission: A farm record, YieldRank™ score or YieldSecure™ assessment is shared with a lender or insurer only with your permission, or where a Partner that enrolled you has obtained it as described in Section 3.7. Partners receive only the data required for the assessment or service they requested.
  • Payment Partners: When an institution uses YieldPay™, we send the recipient and payment details needed to complete each payment to the bank, mobile money operator or other payment partner configured by that institution
  • Program Operators and Funders: With the cooperative, aggregator, NGO, government agency or other Partner running a program you are enrolled in, and, where the program requires it, with that program's funders or buyers for reporting and audit
  • Sponsorship Donors: Your name and basic profile details, if you are sponsored through the CropSense Sponsorship Program (see Section 3.8)
  • Research Institutions: Anonymized or aggregated data, or personal information with your explicit consent, for agricultural research
  • Business Transfers: In connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or part of our business
  • Google Sign-In: If you register or sign in with Google, we receive your email address and name from Google. We do not control how Google otherwise uses your data; please review Google's privacy policy
  • Aggregated Data: Anonymized, aggregated data that cannot identify individual users may be shared for industry research, benchmarking, and market analysis

5.3 Legal Requirements

We may disclose information when required by law or when disclosure is necessary to:

  • Comply with legal processes, court orders, or government requests
  • Protect the rights, property, or safety of CropSense, users, or others
  • Investigate potential violations of our Terms of Use
  • Prevent fraud or other illegal activities

6. International Data Transfers

CropSense serves users across Africa, and some of our service providers, including cloud hosting, AI model providers and WhatsApp, process data in other countries, including countries outside Africa. When we transfer personal information outside the country where it was collected, we do so in line with applicable data protection law, for example by relying on the adequacy of the destination's data protection laws, contractual safeguards with the recipient, or your consent, and we require recipients to protect your information to a standard consistent with this Privacy Policy.

7. Data Security, Retention and Breach Notification

7.1 Data Security

We implement reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. These measures include:

  • Encryption: Using SSL/TLS encryption for data in transit
  • Access Controls: Restricting access to authorized personnel, and role-based permissions for institutional accounts
  • Regular Security Reviews: Conducting periodic reviews of our security practices
  • Data Minimization: Collecting only the personal data needed for the stated purposes

No Internet transmission or electronic storage method is 100% secure. While we use commercially acceptable means to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7.2 Data Retention

We retain personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes it was collected for, including legal, accounting, or reporting requirements:

  • Account Information: Retained while your account is active and for 7 years after closure
  • Agricultural Data and Farmer Registry Records: Retained for 10 years to support long-term trend analysis
  • Transaction and Payment Records: Subscription transactions and YieldPay™ payment records are retained for 7 years for tax, accounting and audit purposes
  • Communication Records: Correspondence and CropSense Advisory conversations, including photos and voice notes, are retained for 5 years
  • YieldRank™ Scores and Risk Factors: Retained for the duration of the associated loan or credit relationship, and thereafter as required for audit and regulatory review
  • YieldSecure™ Policy, Trigger and Payout Records: Retained for the duration of the associated policy, and thereafter as required for audit, claims review and regulatory review

When a retention period ends, we securely delete or anonymize the information unless longer retention is legally required.

7.3 Breach Notification

If a personal data breach is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the Nigeria Data Protection Commission and any other competent data protection authority within the time required by law (within 72 hours under the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023), and we will inform affected individuals without undue delay where the breach is likely to result in a high risk to them.

8. Cookies

Our websites use strictly necessary cookies to function and, with your consent, analytics cookies, including Google Analytics, to understand how visitors use the site. You can change your cookie choices at any time through the cookie settings on our website or in your browser. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may affect how the site works.

9. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on your location and applicable data protection laws, you have the following rights regarding your personal information.

9.1 Access and Portability

  • Access and review your personal information
  • Request a copy of your data in a portable format
  • Receive information about how your data is processed

9.2 Correction and Updates

  • Update or correct inaccurate personal information
  • Complete incomplete data records
  • Change your communication preferences

9.3 Deletion Rights

You may request deletion of your personal information, subject to:

  • Legal obligations requiring us to retain it
  • Our legitimate interests, where these are not overridden by your rights
  • Ongoing contractual relationships, such as an active loan, insurance policy or payment program

9.4 Objection and Opt-Out Rights

You can object to or opt out of:

  • Marketing communications (you will still receive service-related messages)
  • Proactive CropSense Advisory alerts on WhatsApp, by replying STOP or contacting us
  • The use of your personal information for model training (see Section 4.1)
  • Analytics cookies (see Section 8)
  • Sharing based on your permission, by withdrawing that permission

9.5 Exercising Your Rights and Making a Complaint

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in Section 14. We will respond within the time required by applicable data protection law and may need to verify your identity first. If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission or the data protection authority in your country.

10. Automated Decision-Making

Several CropSense Services use automated processing and profiling to produce scores, triggers, payment instructions and recommendations. This section explains how each one works and your rights.

10.1 YieldRank™ Credit Scoring

YieldRank™ is our agricultural credit-risk engine. It processes agronomic data (crop-soil suitability, historical yield, satellite crop health), climate data (drought/flood exposure, climate stress factors), and alternative financial proxies (mobile money history, input purchase data, cooperative participation records) to generate a credit score, risk band, and supporting risk factors for a farm or applicant. Scores are produced by proprietary AI models calibrated to local soils, climate and cropping systems, and are refreshed monthly through the crop cycle. Model performance, including known limitations such as satellite resolution constraints on sub-hectare intercropped plots, is documented and made available to institutional partners for review.

CropSense does not lend, underwrite, or make the final decision to approve, decline, or price a loan. YieldRank scores are supplied to financial institutions (banks, digital lenders, microfinance institutions, cooperatives and agribusiness aggregators) as one input into their own credit process. The lending decision, and any legal or similarly significant effect that follows from it, rests with the financial institution.

Where a financial institution or aggregator submits an applicant's information for scoring, for example through bulk applicant scoring or the YieldRank Integration API, CropSense processes that information on the institution's instructions as a data processor, even though CropSense remains a joint controller for data collected directly through its own Services. The institution is responsible for obtaining the applicant's consent or establishing another lawful basis, and for providing the applicant with notice of the assessment. Farmers and field agents who use the YieldRank self-assessment feature directly are treated as CropSense users for that data.

10.2 YieldSecure™ Insurance Triggers

YieldSecure™ continuously compares satellite, weather and agronomic data for insured farms against the trigger thresholds agreed in each policy, and calculates the payout when a trigger is met. CropSense is not an insurer: the insurer or financing institution designs and issues the policy, decides on settlement and pays any claim. When an insurer submits policy and farm data, CropSense processes it on the insurer's instructions as a data processor, and the insurer is responsible for having a lawful basis and giving policyholders notice. Because parametric payouts follow the agreed index rather than an on-farm loss assessment, a payout may differ from the actual loss on a particular farm.

10.3 YieldPay™ Payment Instructions

YieldPay™ creates payment instructions when a verified farm event or institutional decision occurs, such as an approved loan, a YieldSecure trigger or a confirmed farm milestone. YieldPay does not hold funds. It facilitates payments by routing instructions to the bank, mobile money operator or other payment partner configured by the paying institution, which moves the money. The paying institution decides who is paid and how much, and CropSense processes recipient and payment data on its instructions.

10.4 CropSense Advisory Recommendations

CropSense Advisory uses AI to generate farm advice and alerts from your messages and Farm Context. These are recommendations only: they do not produce legal or similarly significant effects, and you decide whether and how to act on them.

10.5 Your Rights Regarding Automated Decisions

If a YieldRank™ score, a YieldSecure™ trigger or payout calculation, or a YieldPay™ payment decision is used in a decision that produces legal or similarly significant effects concerning you, such as a loan being declined or a payout not being made, you have the right to:

  • Request meaningful information about the logic, data and key factors involved;
  • Request a review, including by a human reviewer, where the decision was based solely on automated processing;
  • Express your point of view and contest the result or the decision made using it; and
  • Request correction of inaccurate underlying data.

Because the lending, insurance or payment decision itself is made by the institution, you should raise a dispute about a specific loan, claim or payment with that institution in the first instance. To exercise these rights with respect to CropSense's processing of your data, contact us using the details in Section 14.

11. Children's Privacy

The Services are intended for people aged 18 or over, or the age of legal majority in their jurisdiction. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from anyone under that age. Where a Partner enrolls a farmer under the age of majority, for example as part of a youth or family farming program, the Partner is responsible for obtaining the consent of a parent or guardian as required by law. If you believe a child has provided personal information to us without appropriate consent, please contact us and we will delete it.

12. Third-Party Links and Services

The Services may contain links to third-party websites or integrate external services, such as WhatsApp, Google Sign-In and payment partners. This Privacy Policy does not apply to those third-party services, and we encourage you to review their privacy policies.

13. Compliance

CropSense operates across all African countries, and this Privacy Policy is designed to meet applicable data protection requirements in each. In Nigeria, we comply with the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023 (NDPA), the General Application and Implementation Directive issued under it, and other relevant Nigerian laws. CipherSense AI Technologies Limited, as joint controller, is registered with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) as a Data Controller and Processor under registration number NDPC/DCP/13640.

Where the law of another African country governs your use of the Services, such as Kenya's Data Protection Act, 2019, Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012, or South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013, we comply with that country's data protection framework as well. As a matter of policy, and to support institutional partners and users worldwide, we also align our data handling with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including its principles on lawful basis for processing, data minimization, purpose limitation, and data subject rights, even where GDPR does not directly apply.

14. Data Protection Officer and Contact Us

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to oversee our handling of personal data. For questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, to exercise your rights, or to contact our DPO, email us at hello@cropsenseai.com with "Attention: Data Protection Officer" in the subject line.