Privacy Policy

This website is published and maintained by the African Biosafety Network of Expertise (ABNE). ABNE values the privacy of visitors to our website and this online policy is to disclose our information gathering and dissemination practices. ABNE is referred to in this Privacy Policy as “we,” “us,” “our,” or other similar pronouns. Information collected on this website will be used according to the following guidelines:

Personal Information Policy

ABNE is a service provider and does not collect any personally identifiable information except when the information is expressly volunteered. Personally identifiable information may be collected when you:register as a member of the network

  • register for a workshop, seminar, internship, or short course
  • request for information
  • request contact with an ABNE technical staff or consultant
  • subscribe to newsletters, policy briefs, or e-mail alerts
  • participate in a survey to improve product or service delivery
  • participate in various services or features made available on the website including but not limited to message boards, hotline and blogs
  • provide ABNE with comments, questions or feedback on ABNE products and services or on your website experience.

Personally identifiable information can include your name, business address, e-mail address, telephone, fax number, short message service address, demographic information, and any other information that may identify you as an individual or allow online or offline contact with you. Any personally identifiable information that you submit to us is used only for the purpose for which it was given. ABNE will never sell or share your personal information with any third party without your consent or court order.

You may review or update any of your personally identifiable information either directly on our website or by sending an e-mail to abne@nepadbiosafety.net. The information collected is used to deliver products and services, analyze and monitor website activity, help plan the future development of the website, and help build the service network.

Contact Us

Please fill out our online form to directly contact us with any questions, comments, or requests that you may have. This could be by phone calls, live chat options or e-mails. ABNE will use your e-mail address to provide you with information we think you will be interested in including sending you our newsletters and policy briefs, notifying you of new publications and announcements, or informing you about updates to our website. You can let us know at any time if you would prefer not to receive any or all of this information either directly on our website or by sending an e-mail to abne@nepadbiosafety.net.

Refer-a-regulator

ABNE respects the privacy of all persons and will not keep or maintain, without express permission, names or e-mail addresses when you use our refer-a-regulator function. The refer-a-regulator function is solely to provide other regulators with the information you have requested we pass along to them.

Hotline, webcasts, online meetings and similar services

Users may be able to access our hotline or participate in our webcasts, online meetings or similar services on the website which is hosted or operated by our portal. Users may be able to register for such webcasts, online meetings or hotline services directly by registering with ABNE and any Personally Identifiable Information that may be disclosed during participation in such services would be treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Sharing Personally Identifiable Information

ABNE may share Personally Identifiable Information collected electronically through this website in the following ways:

  • Periodically, ABNE works with other service providers in Africa and outside the continent to provide specific products and services. When you sign up for or utilize such products or services, we will share Personally Identifiable Information necessary for our partner to provide these products or services to you.
  • When you contribute to a public area or feature of our website, such as our online message boards, blogs or other such open fora, the information that you submit will be made available to the general public. For this reason, we recommend that you exercise caution in the submission of Personally Identifiable Information to these areas of our website as it will be publicly accessible
  • We may disclose to third parties aggregate, non-personally identifiable data regarding user behavior, such as overall patterns or demographic reports, as a measure of interest in, and use of, our website and e-mails.

Logged Files and Cookies

When logged onto our website, our server automatically identifies your computer by its IP address and this allows us to use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, administer our website, and to constantly improve the value of our services. We do not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable. This means that a user’s session will be tracked, but the user will be anonymous. When you request pages from our website, our server may log your IP address and/or your domain name. Our server may also record the referring page that linked you to us, the pages you visit on our website, the website you visit through our website, and any search terms you have entered on our website or a referral website as well as other web usage activity and data logged by our server. This information is used for internal system administration to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our website. The information may also be used to gather broad demographic information such as country of origin.

A cookie is a piece of data that is stored on a visitor’s hard drive. These cookies do not identify, monitor or track any Personally Identifiable Information. We use cookies to track traffic patterns on our website; determine the usefulness of our resources and services to our users; assess the effectiveness and efficiency of our navigational structure in helping users reach information being sought; and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. ABNE does not correlate this information with data about individual users, nor does it share this information or sell it to any third party.

Security

Protecting your privacy and your information is of utmost importance to us. We use commercially reasonable means to protect the integrity of our website and your confidentiality. ABNE team members are aware of our privacy and security policies and your information is only accessible to employees who need it to perform their duties. However, we cannot provide absolute assurance against, and will not be liable for, any breaches of confidentiality due to system failures or unauthorized access by third parties.

You may be able to create an account on our website with a username and password. If so, you are responsible for maintaining the strict confidentiality and security of your account password, and are responsible for any access to or use of the website through your password or account, whether or not such access or use has been authorized by you or on your behalf. You agree to immediately notify us of any unauthorized use of your password or account or any other breach of security and also ensure that you exit from your account at the end of each session. When you desire to cancel your ABNE website account, it is your responsibility to notify us. We shall not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage arising from your failure to comply with this provision.

Links

ABNE’s website contains links to other websites. We encourage you to visit these websites to learn about their privacy policies as theirs may differ from ours. To the extent that any linked websites you visit are not part of ABNE, we are not responsible for their content, security, any use of the websites, or the privacy statements of these websites.

Update of User Information

Reasonable access to your Personally Identifiable Information will be provided within 60 days of request at no cost to the user. If access cannot be provided within that timeframe, we will provide the user a date when the information will be provided. If for some reason access is denied, we will provide an explanation as to why access has been denied.

If your Personally Identifiable Information changes, or if you no longer desire to use or access our website or services, we will provide a way to update or remove your Personally Identifiable Information. You can let us know of this by sending an e-mail to abne@nepadbiosafety.net This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Updates to Our Privacy Policy

This policy may be updated periodically and without prior notice to you to reflect changes in our online information practices. We will post a prominent notice on this website to notify you of any significant changes to our policy and indicate at the top of the policy when it was most recently updated.

Acceptance

Use of this website shall constitute the user’s acceptance of this privacy policy. If you have any questions or complaints about any uses of data, or about this statement in general, or if you believe that there has been a violation of this Privacy Policy, you may contact our webmaster.