Privacy Policy
Effective Date: September 13, 2026 • Last updated: September 2026
1. Introduction & Scope
Tafiti AI (“we”, “our”, or “us”) is an academic research platform dedicated to empowering scholars, scientists, and students across Africa and globally. We respect your confidentiality and are committed to protecting the privacy of your research inquiries, intellectual property, and personal data.
This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, store, process, and safeguard information when you use the Tafiti AI web application at https://tafitiai.co.ke, our APIs, and associated services.
2. Information We Collect
A. Account & Profile Data: When you register via Clerk, we collect your name, email address, avatar image, and researcher field preferences (such as Medicine, Agriculture, Computer Science, or Law).
B. Research Inquiries & Prompts: Research questions, systematic review criteria, synthesis parameters, and search filters submitted to our synthesis engines.
C. Uploaded Documents: PDF manuscripts, theses, and reference lists uploaded for literature grounding or citation extraction.
D. Transaction & Subscription Data: Payment verification tokens and billing status processed securely via Paystack. We do not store full credit card numbers or banking secrets on our servers.
E. Telemetry & Analytics: Anonymized usage statistics, browser type, device identifiers, and response latencies to ensure platform stability and performance optimization.
3. Zero Model Training on Private Research Data
4. How We Use Information
- Synthesize academic literature and cross-reference claims against 200M+ peer-reviewed papers.
- Connect research inquiries to African open-access repositories (including AJOL and AfricArxiv) and global indexing databases (OpenAlex, arXiv, Crossref).
- Maintain your research history, saved libraries, and exportable citation graphs.
- Manage account access, subscription tiers, and billing notifications.
- Prevent abuse, enforce rate limits, and maintain system security.
5. Data Retention & Security Standards
All data in transit is protected using modern Transport Layer Security (TLS 1.3). Data at rest is encrypted using industry-standard AES-256 encryption. Uploaded research materials and session histories are strictly segregated by tenant user IDs. You may export or permanently delete your chat sessions and uploaded files at any time via the dashboard.
6. Your Rights & Data Choices
In compliance with applicable data protection regulations, including the Kenya Data Protection Act 2019 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you possess the right to:
- Access and download all stored research records and personal details.
- Request immediate deletion of your account and associated session histories.
- Revoke consent for non-essential communications or marketing notifications.
- Request correction of inaccurate personal profile data.
7. Contact & Privacy Inquiries
For questions, data access requests, or compliance inquiries, please contact our Data Protection team at: