The Pan-Africa Center for Artificial Intelligence Ethics (PACFAIE) is committed to privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how and for what purposes we collect, use, share and store personal information.
This Privacy Policy also explains how we protect personal information and the rights of individuals with respect to their personal information. The Policy generally applies to personal information we collect about participants, facilitators, organizers and other researchers who are members of PACFAIE. It also applies to information you collect when you visit our website (www.pacfaie.org), communicate with us, apply for a job referencing PACFAIE, use our participant services and tools, attend a PACFAIE organized event or interact with us in relation to your role, duties and responsibilities within the duration of this program.
This privacy policy is not intended to cover personal information that may be collected, used or shared as part of research projects.
We follow best practices regarding ethics in AI, in line with our mission of contextualizing AI for the benefit of all.
More information about us can be found on our website.
What is Personal Information?
In this policy, “personal information’ generally means information about an identifiable individual.
This may include for example, your name, contact information, home address, email address or birth date. It may also include other types of more technical information, but only when this information can identify you as an individual. Information that is anonymized so that it irreversibly no longer allows the person to be identified directly or indirectly and cannot be associated with an identifiable individual is not considered to be personal information.
What Categories of personal information do we collect?
We limit the collection of personal information to what is reasonably required to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected. Depending on your interaction with us, we may collect your name, contact information, demographic information, academic and employment information, browsing activity and other technical information collected automatically on our websites, information about your use of our networks and our premises, video footage captured from video surveillance (CCTV) cameras in our offices and other information you may provide to us. We may collect other categories of personal information with your consent or as permitted and/or required by law.
Depending on your interaction with us, we may collect the following types of personal information:
Name, contact information and demographic information, such as your name, email address, home address, phone number, gender or country of citizenship. We may collect this information in various situations, for instance: if you are a PACFAIE research fellow, participant, or facilitator; if you contact us with an inquiry; if you subscribe to attend a PACFAIE program (conference, workshop, seminar, etc.); if you otherwise interact with PACFAIE as part of your role or duties within your organization (for instance if you are an employee, student, researcher or professor involved with our collaborating organizations).
Academic and employment information, such as information about your work experience, your academic background and all other information you may submit through your application or profile, for instance, if you are a professor, researcher and/or student. We may also collect this information about you if you apply for a research program or collaboration with PACFAIE, apply to become a participant/student at PACFAIE, and/or participate in a PACFAIE research project.
Browsing activity and other technical information, such as IP addresses, page viewed on our website, opt-out preferences, email bounce backs, content on social media, if it can identify you as an individual (as further detailed under Cookies and similar technologies). We may collect this information if you visit our website or receive emails from PACFAIE.
Information about your use of our networks and our premises, such as information about your use of our IT infrastructure and networking tools.
Means of Collection – How do we collect personal information?
We may collect personal information directly from you, from other organizations such as our collaborating organizations with which you may be involved, through technologies we use on our website if you visit our website.
Learn more about how we may collect personal information
Directly from you: We may collect personal information directly from you in various circumstances, for instance, if you contact us (including by email and social media), if you apply for a position at PACFAIE (including on our website) or participate in our Summer School program, if you input and submit to us your information in a text field or in a form (including on our website or on a microsite on which this policy appears), if you apply to become a participant at PACFAIE, if you meet a PACFAIE representative at conferences or PACFAIE events (workshops, seminars, presentations, etc.), or through your interactions with PACFAIE in your role or duties within your organization (for instance if you are an employee, student, researcher or facilitator with our collaborating organizations).
From other organizations, such as our collaborating organizations. We may receive personal information from other organizations, such as our collaborating organizations, if relevant to your role or duties within the organization (for instance if you are an employee, student, researcher or professor at our collaborating organizations).
From your employer, your former employer and other third parties. When you apply for a position at PACFAIE, we may perform background checks (with your consent) and reference checks (with your consent when required by applicable law) during the course of which we may collect personal information about you from third parties, such as your employer, your former employer or other third parties, in order to evaluate your candidacy.
Through technologies we use on our website. We may collect certain types of information electronically through your use of our website, using technologies (either our own or third party technologies) such as cookies and web beacons (see Cookies and PACFAIE technologies for more details).
Purposes of Collection – How do we use personal information?
We may use your personal information for the following purposes or otherwise with your consent or as permitted and/or required by law:
a. General operational purposes
We may use your personal information for general operational purposes such as providing or delivering our services and conducting our activities, managing our organization (preventing or reducing operational risk, as well as for purposes relating to information, system or network security), managing our website and processing applications for jobs, internships, training courses and scholarships.
Learn more about how we may use your personal information for general operational purposes.
More specifically, we may use your personal information for the following general operational purposes:
Providing and delivering our services and conducting our activities. We use personal information as necessary to provide and deliver our services and to conduct our activities. This includes delivering training programs and courses, organizing events (seminars, workshops, conferences), managing our projects with other organizations such as our collaborating organizations, and providing and delivering the content, information or other services you requested (including on our website or on a microsite on which this policy appears).
Managing our operations. We use your personal information for several reasons in connection with our operations, which may include: exercising due diligence to prevent or reduce our operational risk, ensuring the security of our information, system, network and property, and complying with our legal and regulatory obligations.
Managing our website. We use information we collect from website visitors to manage and improve our website (see Cookies and similar technologies for more information).
Processing applications for jobs, internships, supervision and scholarships. If you apply for a position at PACFAIE, or to be granted student participation privileges at PACFAIE or apply for a scholarship, we may use your personal information as necessary to process and evaluate your application.
b. Operational analytics purposes
We may also use information for internal operational analytics purposes (when possible or when required by law, we will de-identify or anonymize information before using it for such purposes). For instance, we may use third-party web analytics services, such as Google Analytics, to help us analyze how visitors use our websites.
c. Respond to your inquiries and communicating with you
If you contact us with a question or inquiry, we may use your personal information to respond to you. We may also communicate with you to promote our activities (such as our events, courses, webinars, etc.) or to deliver content, information or other services you have requested through our website (including a microsite on which this policy appears). If you no longer wish to receive our promotional electronic messages from PACFAIE, please follow the unsubscribe procedure included in each of these messages.
When do we share your personal information with other organizations?
We may share your personal information with our collaborating organizations when collaborating on projects, with our service providers retained to perform an outsourced task on our behalf, in the context of a sale or transaction, or otherwise with your consent or as permitted or required by law.
Learn more about how we may share your personal information.
We may share your personal information as follows:
With other organizations, such as our collaborating organizations. We may share personal information with our collaborating organizations for the purposes described in this policy, for instance if necessary to collaborate on research projects, if you have applied for an internship or fellowship with a PACFAIE collaborating organizations or if you are a member of a collaborating organization and have applied to become a participant at PACFAIE.
With our service providers. We may transfer your personal information to other organizations and businesses that provide services to us (such as backup and server hosting providers, IT software and maintenance providers). We require these service providers to protect personal information with appropriate security safeguards.
In the context of the sale or transfer of our institute or other transaction. We may decide to sell or transfer all or part of our institute, merge with another entity, secure our assets or proceed with any other financing or other strategic capital transactions. We may share your personal information when required for the purposes of such a transaction.
Other permitted reasons.
We may share your personal information when permitted or required by applicable law. This may be the case, for instance, if PACFAIE is under a duty to disclose or share your personal information in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply PACFAIE’s terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of PACFAIE or others.
Cookies and Similar Technologies
We may collect certain types of information electronically through your contact with our website using technologies (either our own or third party technologies) such as cookies. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer when you visit a website so that information can be saved between visits, such as your login credentials or language preferences. Thus, cookies allow you to log in quickly when you visit our sites.
We use the information collected to adapt our website to the preferences of the user concerned, to compile statistics about the consultation and use of our website and our electronic communications (such as our newsletters) in order to improve them. For example, we may use your geographic location to determine the language in which to display our website.
What are your privacy choices?
Upon reasonable notice and subject to legal or contractual restrictions, you may withdraw your consent to the use and disclosure of your personal information by PACFAIE. To withdraw your consent, please use the contact information listed in the Contact Us section below. Withdrawing your consent may impact the services we are able to provide to you.
You can always unsubscribe from promotional electronic messages from PACFAIE by following the unsubscribe procedure included in each of these messages.
How do we protect your personal information?
To protect your personal information, we employ organizational, physical and technological safeguards to prevent unauthorized access, loss, misuse, sharing or alteration of personal information in our possession. We also use these safeguards when we dispose of or destroy your personal information.
How long do we keep your personal information?
We store your personal information for as long as is necessary to provide our services to you, to manage our operations, and to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. Once no longer required, your personal information will be securely destroyed or anonymized (so the information no longer identifies you).
Accessing and correcting your personal information
PACFAIE respects your right to access and rectify personal information we hold about you. To exercise these rights, please use the contact information listed in the Contact us section below.
Changes to the privacy policy
We may make changes to this policy from time to time. Any changes we make will be effective when we post the revised policy on our website. If we make any significant changes to the policy, we will post a notice on our website or contact you to inform you when required by law. By continuing to interact with us after the modified version of the policy has been posted, you are accepting the changes to the policy, subject to any additional requirements that may apply.
Contact us
If you have any questions about how we handle your personal information, please contact us at:
info@pacfaie.org
