Terms and Conditions

Effective Date: 06 March 2025 

Welcome to Africa Climate Insights’s (ACI) Community of Practice herein referred to ACI-COP. By accessing or using ACI-COP, you agree to comply with and be bound by these Terms and Conditions (“Terms”). If you do not agree with any part of these Terms, you should not access or use the Site. 

1. Acceptance of Terms 

By accessing or using the Site, you agree to be bound by these Terms, including any future updates. We reserve the right to update or modify these Terms at any time without prior notice. It is your responsibility to review these Terms periodically for any changes. 

2. User Registration 

To access certain features of the ACI-COP, you may be required to register as a member. By registering, you agree to: 

• Provide accurate and up-to-date information. 
• Maintain the confidentiality of your login credentials. 
• Accept full responsibility for all activities that occur under your account. 

The ACI-COP is available for access or use to persons who have reached the age of legal majority and who are competent to enter into legally binding agreements under the applicable law. 

By accessing or using the Website, You acknowledge and agree that either: You are at the legal age of majority in the country where You are a resident or citizen (or you have the consent of a parent or guardian to access and use the Website); or if You are using the Website on behalf of an entity, You are authorised to accept these Terms of Use on that entity’s behalf. 

If you believe your account has been compromised, you must notify us immediately. 3. User Conduct 

By using the ACI-COP you agree to abide by ACI’s Code of Conduct 

By using the ACI-COP, you agree not to : 

• Post or transmit content that is unlawful, abusive, defamatory, harmful, harassing, or otherwise objectionable. 
• Interfere with or try to disrupt our Services, for example by distributing a virus, excessive requests to our site or platform, or other harmful computer code.
• Crawl, scrape, or spider any page of the Services or to reverse engineer or attempt to obtain the source code of the Services without our express permission. ● Use our name, logo or trademark without our express permission. 
• Violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law. 
• Post spam, advertisements, or promotional content without prior authorization. ● Impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity. 
• Interfere with or disrupt the operation of the COP, servers, or networks connected to the COP. 

We reserve the right to remove content that violates these terms, suspend or terminate user accounts, or take any other necessary actions. 

4. Content Ownership and License 

• You retain ownership of the content you post on the Site (e.g., forum posts, comments, etc.), but by posting content, you grant ACI a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, display, modify, and distribute such content on the ACI-COP. 
• You are solely responsible for the content you post. We do not endorse, and are not responsible for, any user-generated content. 

5. Privacy and Data Protection 

Your use of the ACI-COP is also governed by our Privacy Policy, which explains how we collect, use, and protect your personal information. Please review our Privacy Policy here 

6. Moderation and Reporting 

The ACI-COP is moderated to ensure a safe and respectful environment. We may, at our sole discretion, remove or edit any content that violates these Terms. 

Should you have any complaint about the content on the Website you may contact and inform us at any time through the contact details provided. We will assess your complaint, in our sole discretion, and if it is found that there is validity in your complaint, the content complained of will immediately be removed from the Website. 

We may request further information from you in order to assess your complaint, however, We are generally not obligated to respond to your complaint directly. 

Users may report inappropriate content or behavior by using the “Report” button next to the post or message, providing a brief description of the issue. 

7. Intellectual Property 

The content displayed on the Website may belong to us, our affiliates and partners or other people and entities and is protected by copyright, trademarks and other intellectual

property and proprietary rights laws. All rights to such intellectual and other property not expressly granted to you remain reserved. 

Unless otherwise permitted, you agree not to use, reproduce or make copies of any of the content displayed or made available on the Website without our prior written consent, and, if permitted to use the content, agree to adhere to and comply with any and all applicable policies, guidelines, licensing terms and conditions of use and rules that may apply to the use of such content. 

Despite what is stated above, you may download and print one copy of the Website’s content for non-commercial, information and educational purposes only. 

8. Limitation of Liability 

General. To the fullest extent permitted by law, We will not be liable to you or any third-party for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or other loss or damage, however caused, which may arise out of, or in connection with your use of the Website or your use or reliance on information and content contained on the Website. 

Content You Access. Despite our best efforts to moderate user content, you may come across materials that you find offensive or inappropriate while using our website and ACI-COP. We make no representations concerning any content posted by users through the Services. We are not responsible for the accuracy, copyright compliance, legality, or decency of content posted by users that you accessed through the ACI-COP. You release us from all liability relating to that content. 

People You Interact With. You can use the Services to interact with other individuals, either online or in person. However, you understand that we do not screen users of our Services other than to meet certain compliance and legal obligations, and you release us from all liability relating to your interactions with other users. Please be careful and exercise caution and good judgement in all interactions with others, especially if you are meeting someone in person. 

Viruses, Malware and Security. To the extent permitted by applicable law, the Service and all content on ACI-COP is provided on an ‘as is’ basis without warranty of any kind, whether express or implied. We do not warrant that ACI-COP or any portion of the Service, or any materials or content offered through ACI website, are accurate, complete or current, or will be uninterrupted, secure or free of errors, viruses or other harmful components. 

The limitations, exclusions and disclaimers in this Section apply to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. 

You take full responsibility and risk for your use of the website and hereby indemnify us from and against any and all liability of any nature whatsoever suffered by you or any third-party resulting out of or arising from your use of the website and/or your breach of these Terms of use.

9. Warranties 

Although we take all technical and organisational measures to ensure that the website is available, safe and accurate, due to the unpredictable nature of the internet, we cannot and do not warrant that the website or the content of the website will be uninterrupted, error-free, free from defects or free from viruses, malicious code or other harmful components. 

10. Third-Party Links 

The ACI-COP may contain links to third-party websites or services that we don’t own or control (for example, links to social media or news websites). When you access these third-party services, you do so at your own risk. The third parties may require you to accept their own terms of use. ACI is not a party to those agreements; they are solely between you and the third party. 

10. Termination 

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access to the ACI-COP at any time for violating these Terms or for any other reason, without notice. 

11. Governing Law 

These Terms of Use will be governed by the laws of the Kingdom of Belgium. Any disputes resulting from these Terms of Use shall be submitted to a competent Court having jurisdiction in Brussels. 

12. Dispute Resolution 

If a dispute arises between you and ACI-COP, we encourage you to contact us at [email protected] to seek a resolution. 

These Terms and any disputes between you and ACI will be exclusively governed by laws of the Kingdom of Belgium, and exclusively decided in the courts of Brussels, except to the extent prohibited by law. 

If you are an individual consumer, you may be entitled to invoke the mandatory consumer protection laws of your country of residence, and/or to bring legal proceedings in the courts of that country. 

13. Miscellaneous 

• If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions shall remain in full effect. 
• These Terms, their associated Code of Conduct and Privacy Policy represent the entire agreement between you and ACI regarding your use of the ACI-COP. 

If you have any questions or concerns regarding these Terms, please contact us at [email protected].