Privacy policy.

This privacy policy explains how Whitney Paprika — a trading name of Blackdombo International (Company Reg. No. 229712), registered in Zimbabwe and with offices at 1 Harvey Brown Ave, Milton Park, Harare, Zimbabwe — collects, uses and shares information about you.

By using this website, our grower or admin portals, or by submitting a registration or contact form to us, you accept the practices described in this policy.

We collect information you give us directly, including:

• Identity & contact details — name, email address, phone number, WhatsApp number, postal/farm address.
• Farm & business details — farm location, hectarage, tenure, water and irrigation status, paprika/chilli growing history, referral source.
• Account information — for growers and staff, login credentials, role, assigned officer, password hashes, password change history, and an audit trail of activity logged in the portal.
• Season activity — entries, photos, agrochemical inputs, comments, and any other data you upload to the grower portal during a season.

We also collect technical information automatically, including IP address, browser type, device identifiers, and timestamps necessary to operate the service securely.

We use your information to:

• Operate the grower programme, including issuing grower numbers, contracts, agronomy support and payment.
• Communicate with you by email, SMS or WhatsApp about your registration, your season activity, agronomy advice and market opportunities.
• Maintain security, prevent fraud, and meet our legal and regulatory obligations under Zimbabwean and applicable foreign law.
• Improve our products and services through analytics and internal research.

To deliver the Whitney Paprika programme end-to-end, we may share your information — including your identity, contact details, farm information and season activity — with commercial, development and government partners. These partners include (but are not limited to):

• Seed companies, agrochemical suppliers and equipment vendors integrated into our programme;
• Buyers, exporters and processors who purchase paprika and chilli through us;
• Financial institutions, mobile-money operators and insurers who help fund or insure your season;
• Logistics, warehousing and quality-control providers;
• NGOs, donors, government departments and research institutions we work with on rural-development, climate-smart agriculture or compliance programmes;
• Service providers that operate our infrastructure (cloud hosting, email delivery, image storage, SMS gateways).

We share only the information that is necessary for the specific purpose, and we require these partners to keep your information confidential and use it only for the agreed purpose. We may also publish aggregated or anonymised statistics (for example, total hectarage contracted, average yields) that do not identify any individual grower.

We may transfer information outside Zimbabwe where a partner or service provider is located in another country. Where we do, we satisfy ourselves that an appropriate level of protection is in place.

We will not sell your personal information to third parties for their independent marketing purposes.

We keep your information for as long as you are an active grower, contact or staff member, and afterwards for as long as we are required to do so by law, by contract, or by legitimate business purposes such as tax, audit, dispute resolution and historical record-keeping for the programme.

Subject to applicable law, you have the right to:

• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• Ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• Ask us to delete information where we no longer have a lawful basis to keep it;
• Withdraw any consent you have given us at any time;
• Lodge a complaint with the data-protection authority in your jurisdiction.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at info@whitneypaprika.co.zw or write to us at the address above. We will respond within a reasonable period.

We use industry-standard safeguards — encrypted transport (HTTPS), hashed passwords, role-based access controls and httpOnly cookies for session management — to protect your information. No system is perfectly secure, however, and we cannot guarantee absolute security of information transmitted to or held by us.

Our portals use a small number of essential cookies (notably the authentication cookie that keeps you signed in). We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies. You can block cookies in your browser, but the portal will not function without the authentication cookie.

Our services are intended for users who are 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe we have, please contact us so we can delete it.

We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services or the law. We will post the updated version here with a new "Last updated" date. If the change is material, we will let active growers and staff know by email.

Questions about this policy or about how we handle your information can be sent to info@whitneypaprika.co.zw or in writing to:
Blackdombo International (trading as Whitney Paprika), 1 Harvey Brown Ave, Milton Park, Harare, Zimbabwe.