Terms of Service

1. Acceptance and eligibility

By creating an account or activating a contributor, business, or organization role, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. Role-specific policies referenced during activation also form part of these Terms.

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, submit personal information, apply, purchase, contribute, or register a partner. Public information may be browsed without an account. If you act for a business or organization, you confirm that you are authorized to bind it.

2. What Mthandizi provides

Mthandizi is an AI-powered information, opportunity, career, marketplace, publishing, and organization-service platform for Malawi. Features may include search, chat, recommendations, alerts, career tools, applications, public listings, local shopping, contributor publishing, partner dashboards, applicant management, analytics, APIs, widgets, and Mthandizi Pro.

Features may evolve, be limited by plan or role, or be discontinued. Material paid-service changes will be communicated where reasonably practicable.

3. General user and account rules

• Provide accurate account and profile information and keep it reasonably current;
• Keep login credentials and verification codes confidential;
• Do not impersonate another person, business, or organization;
• Do not use Mthandizi for fraud, harassment, unlawful activity, scraping, spam, or security abuse;
• Only upload information you are entitled to use and disclose; and
• Promptly report suspected unauthorized account access or data misuse.

Opportunity recommendations, match scores, alerts, and summaries support discovery only. They do not guarantee eligibility, selection, employment, admission, funding, or any other outcome.

4. Applications and career features

When you submit an application, you instruct Mthandizi to provide the selected profile details, CV, cover letter, answers, and supporting documents to the identified employer or organization. Review the recipient and documents before submitting. The employer or organization becomes responsible for its own use of the application data it receives.

Career guidance, CV analysis, generated drafts, match scores, and application suggestions are informational tools. You remain responsible for checking accuracy and ensuring that every statement submitted to an employer is truthful.

5. Marketplace and customer terms

Mthandizi connects customers with independent businesses. Unless expressly stated otherwise, Mthandizi is not the seller and does not own, manufacture, stock, or fulfil listed products. The sales contract is between the customer and the seller.

• Sellers set prices, availability, delivery terms, warranties, and product descriptions;
• Customers must provide accurate order and delivery information;
• Mthandizi may facilitate payments, confirmations, support, and dispute communication;
• Customers should raise delivery or product concerns promptly through the available support channel; and
• Nothing in these Terms excludes consumer rights that cannot lawfully be excluded.

A product that is defective, unsafe, materially misdescribed, or not delivered may qualify for cancellation, replacement, or refund under applicable law and the seller's lawful policies.

6. Business terms

A business using Mthandizi must:

• Be lawfully entitled to operate and provide accurate ownership, registration, and contact details;
• Maintain accurate product, service, price, stock, promotion, and fulfilment information;
• Take responsibility for product legality, quality, safety, delivery, returns, warranties, taxes, and licences;
• Use customer information only for the relevant order, enquiry, support, or another lawful purpose;
• Obtain valid consent before sending unrelated direct marketing;
• Restrict customer and order information to authorized team members; and
• Comply with consumer, employment, tax, trade, intellectual-property, and data-protection law.

Verification means that Mthandizi reviewed specified information or documentation at a point in time. It is not a guarantee of solvency, product quality, legality, safety, or future conduct. Subscription fees, limits, payouts, and features are governed by the plan shown when purchased.

7. Contributor terms

Contributors must:

• Submit accurate, current, relevant, and reasonably verified information;
• Identify the original source and preserve important deadlines, contacts, and eligibility details;
• Avoid plagiarism, unauthorized copying, duplicate submissions, scams, and misleading content;
• Avoid unnecessary personal or confidential information and have a lawful basis for any personal data submitted;
• Correct or report information later found to be inaccurate; and
• Follow the Community Guidelines.

Submitted content may be reviewed, formatted, summarized, corrected, rejected, unpublished, or removed. Some trusted workflows may publish before manual review, but all content remains subject to moderation.

8. Contributor earnings

Contributor participation does not create employment, partnership, agency, equity ownership, or guaranteed income. Credits and estimates shown before allocation are not withdrawable cash.

• The current eligibility requirements, funded pool, calculation method, minimum withdrawal, and payout schedule are displayed in the contributor dashboard;
• An amount becomes payable only after it is allocated to the contributor's earnings ledger under an approved funded pool or another confirmed programme;
• Confirmed payouts may be subject to identity, fraud, payment-provider, tax, and account checks;
• Material rule changes will be communicated before taking effect; and
• Confirmed ledger earnings will not be removed without a lawful reason, correction, fraud finding, chargeback, or policy enforcement basis.

9. Organization and employer terms

Organizations, employers, NGOs, institutions, and government bodies must provide accurate information, maintain authorized team access, and comply with applicable publishing, employment, procurement, accessibility, and data-protection obligations.

• Job, tender, scholarship, notice, event, and public-information posts must be accurate, authorized, and kept current;
• Applicant data may be used only for the relevant recruitment or application process and must be limited to staff who genuinely need access;
• Organizations must provide required privacy notices, lawful bases, retention decisions, and responses to applicant rights;
• AI rankings, summaries, and workflow assistance must not replace fair human decision-making where a decision significantly affects a person;
• Downloaded applicant information must be protected outside Mthandizi; and
• Suspected applicant-data or organization-data incidents must be reported to Mthandizi promptly.

10. Mthandizi Pro, APIs, and organization assistants

• Organizations must have the right and lawful basis to upload knowledge content and personal data;
• Secret API keys must remain server-side; public keys must be restricted to authorized domains;
• Keys, quotas, services, or access may not be resold, shared, bypassed, or abused;
• Private organization knowledge is isolated and is not licensed for training services for other organizations;
• AI responses must be reviewed before being relied on for regulated, safety-critical, or significant decisions; and
• Unless a written service-level agreement says otherwise, Pro services are provided on an “as available” basis.

The Data Processing Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy apply to relevant organization and Pro processing.

11. Content ownership and licence

You retain ownership of your original content. For content intended for public or community publication, you grant Mthandizi a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to review, reproduce, format, adapt, translate, summarize, publish, distribute, display, archive, index, embed, and include it in search and AI-generated information services.

This public-content licence does not apply to CVs, applications, private messages, verification documents, payout information, customer order details, or private organization knowledge. Those materials are processed only for the relevant private service, legal obligation, security purpose, or documented organization instruction.

Removing an account does not always require immediate removal of every public contribution. Public content may be removed, anonymised, or retained where reasonably necessary for public-information integrity, attribution, moderation history, legal obligations, or payment and copyright disputes.

12. Payments, subscriptions, and payouts

Payment providers process payment credentials. Mthandizi may receive transaction references, status, payer contact information, and amounts. Prices are shown in the applicable purchase flow. Subscription renewal, expiry, cancellation, feature limits, and any refund terms are those displayed for the selected plan, subject to non-excludable legal rights.

13. Suspension, deletion, and termination

We may restrict, suspend, or terminate an account or feature for material policy violations, fraud, unlawful activity, security threats, non-payment, misuse of personal data, or conduct that puts users or the platform at risk. We will provide a reason where reasonably practicable and not prohibited by law.

You may delete your account through available settings. Personal data will be deleted, anonymised, or retained as described in the Privacy Policy. Orders, confirmed earnings, disputes, legal records, and public content may require separate handling after account closure.

14. Disclaimers and liability

Mthandizi is provided “as is” and “as available.” Information, AI responses, third-party listings, businesses, organizations, and external links may contain errors or become unavailable. Verify important information with the original source.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Mthandizi is not liable for indirect or consequential loss caused by third-party conduct, inaccurate information, service interruption, or decisions made solely from AI output. Any contractual liability cap applies only where lawful and does not exclude rights or liabilities that cannot legally be excluded.

15. Changes, law, and contact

Material changes receive a new effective version. Registered users will be notified through the platform or email and may be required to accept updated Terms before continuing to use protected account features. Business, contributor, and organization-specific terms may also require separate acceptance when a role or service is activated.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Malawi. Disputes are subject to the competent courts of Malawi, without limiting any mandatory consumer or data-protection remedy.