Privacy Policy

The African Coaches League (“ACL”, “we”) runs this website and the member platform behind it: a professional network, directory and development platform for coaches across Africa and the diaspora.

This policy explains what information we hold about you, why, who can see it and the choices you have. It applies to visitors, members and anyone who contacts us.

What we hold depends on how you use ACL.

• Account details: your name, email address, phone number, country and a password. We store only a scrambled (hashed) version of your password, never the password itself.
• Coach profile: your photo, biography, sport, speciality, role, organisation, experience, licences, languages, availability and the visibility you choose.
• Credentials: certificates and licences you upload for verification, and the decisions and notes ACL records about them.
• Membership and payments: your plan, membership number, dates, and payment references, amounts and statuses. Card and bank details are entered with our payment providers and are not stored by ACL.
• Activity on the platform: programmes and events you join, mentorship requests, opportunities you submit, and the messages you send and receive.
• Sign-in records: when and from which device and network address you signed in, so you can review and end sessions.
• Enquiries and updates: what you send through the contact form, and the email address you give to receive updates.

• To create and run your account, membership and Coach Passport.
• To verify your membership and professional credentials.
• To take and confirm payments and issue receipts.
• To run programmes, events, mentorship, opportunities and messaging.
• To answer your enquiries and, if you asked, send programme, event and opportunity updates.
• To keep the platform secure, prevent misuse and meet legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information and we do not show advertising.

Other people. You choose who can find your coach profile in Settings → Privacy: Public (anyone, including the public directory), Members only (signed-in ACL members) or Private (hidden from directories and mentor search). Only active members with a membership number are listed.

Your email address, phone number, date of birth, payment details and credential documents are never shown to other members. Anyone who scans your Coach Passport or opens your verification link sees only a limited view: your name, membership number, country and membership and verification status.

ACL staff. Administrators and officers can see the information they need for their role, for example verification officers see credentials and finance staff see payments.

Service providers. We use trusted providers to run the platform: hosting, a database, file storage for photos and documents, and payment processing (Paystack and Flutterwave). They handle data only to provide those services to us.

Legal reasons. We may disclose information where the law requires it or to protect people from harm.

We use one essential cookie to keep you signed in. It is needed for the platform to work, so it cannot be switched off, and it expires after 30 days or when you sign out. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

We keep your information while your account is open and for as long afterwards as we need it to keep membership, payment and verification records accurate, resolve disputes and meet legal duties. Contact enquiries are kept until they have been dealt with and for a reasonable period afterwards. Messages you sent remain visible to the people you sent them to.

• See and correct: edit your details any time from My Coach Profile.
• Choose your visibility: change it in Settings → Privacy. It takes effect immediately.
• Download your data: Settings → Privacy → Download my data gives you a copy of what we hold about you.
• Control your sessions: Settings → Security lets you change your password and sign out other devices.
• Delete or object: to ask us to delete your account or stop using your information, write to us. We will act unless we must keep something to meet a legal duty, and we will tell you if so.
• Stop updates: ask us to remove your email address from the updates list at any time.

Depending on where you live, you may have further rights under your local data protection law. Contact us and we will help.

Connections to ACL are encrypted, passwords are hashed, sign-in attempts and sensitive actions are limited, and access inside ACL is restricted by role. No online service is completely secure, so please choose a strong password, keep it private and sign out of shared devices. If you think your account has been accessed without your permission, change your password and tell us straight away.

ACL is for coaching professionals and is not aimed at children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will remove it.

We will update this page when our practices change and show the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will give clear notice on the platform.