Terms & Conditions

These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") govern your access to and use of FarmNetwork: the Android app and the website at farmnetwork.ug (together, the "Platform" or "Service"), operated by Yukon Software-SMC Ltd ("FarmNetwork", "we", "us"), a company registered in Uganda.

By creating an account, browsing the course catalogue, enrolling in a Course, or applying to teach, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Platform.

Learner

An account that browses the catalogue and enrols in Courses.

Instructor

An account approved by our review team to publish and sell Courses.

Course

A structured set of video lessons published by an Instructor, priced in Ugandan Shillings (UGX).

Enrolment

Your right to access a Course you have purchased or been granted access to.

Content

Video, text, images, and questions or answers submitted by anyone using the Platform, including Shorts.

Order

A record of your attempt to purchase a Course, whether or not payment completes.

You must be at least 18 years old to hold a FarmNetwork account. The Platform is built for adults running or starting a farming enterprise and is not directed at children.

FarmNetwork accounts are identified by phone number, verified by a one-time code sent via SMS, not by e-mail or a password. You are responsible for:

• keeping your phone number and its SIM under your control, since anyone who receives your verification code can access your account;
• giving accurate information (your name, district, and, if you apply to teach, your farming background);
• everything that happens under your account, until you tell us it has been compromised.

One account per person. An account may hold either a Learner profile or an approved Instructor profile plus Learner access; it may never simultaneously be a FarmNetwork staff account and an approved Instructor account.

FarmNetwork is a marketplace connecting vetted Ugandan farmers who teach with learners who want structured, practical instruction, plus direct Q&A with the instructor, and, on the Android app, short farming videos ("Shorts"). We review every Instructor application and every Course before it reaches the catalogue.

We do not guarantee any particular farming, business, or financial outcome from taking a Course (see Section 12, Educational purpose). We are not the Instructor's employer, and an Instructor's answers to your questions are their own professional judgment, not FarmNetwork's.

5.1 Applying and getting approved

To publish Courses you must apply as an Instructor and be approved by our review team, who assess your farming background and experience. Approval can be withdrawn if your account is later suspended or if content you publish repeatedly breaks these Terms.

5.2 Before a Course goes live

Every Course is checked before publication and after any resubmission. We may request changes, reject a Course, or take a published Course down if it no longer meets our standards or the law. You are solely responsible for the accuracy, safety, and legality of the farming practices, products, and advice you teach.

5.3 Answering learner questions

Direct Q&A is the core of FarmNetwork. When a learner asks a question on your Course, you're expected to answer within your stated response window. We send you reminders as that window closes, and a consistently slow or unanswered queue may affect your standing as an Instructor, even though it is not itself grounds for automatic suspension.

5.4 Your content, our license

You keep ownership of the video and material you upload. By publishing a Course, you grant FarmNetwork a non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, stream, transcode, and display it to learners who enrol, for as long as the Course remains published or a learner retains a valid Enrolment to it.

5.5 What you're paid

A Course's price is set by you within the band we publish, in UGX. Of the price a learner pays, 3% goes to our mobile money payment provider as a processing fee, and of what remains, 75% is yours and 25% is FarmNetwork's platform fee. This breakdown is shown to you live wherever you set a Course's price, and your share is tracked in your Wallet as learners pay for your Courses. We may adjust these figures with the notice required by Section 18. Withdrawing your balance isn't available yet during the pilot; we'll publish the payout schedule and any minimum payout threshold here before withdrawals open.

Prices are shown in UGX and include everything you pay. Checkout may open in your phone's browser rather than inside the app; this is normal and how payment is processed securely.

• An Order is created the moment you start checkout and is held for 10 minutes awaiting payment. If payment does not complete in that window, the Order expires and you may try again.
• Your Enrolment activates as soon as payment is confirmed, and gives you access to that Course's lessons for as long as your account is in good standing.
• If an Instructor updates a Course after you enrol, you get the update at no extra cost.

We accept MTN and Airtel Mobile Money, processed by MarzPay, our licensed third-party payment partner. FarmNetwork never sees or stores your mobile money PIN. Occasionally a mobile money payment takes several minutes to confirm, or does not go through at all. If money leaves your account for an Order that never confirms, contact us at [email protected] with your Order reference and we will investigate.

From time to time we issue discount or free-access coupon codes, including for pilot programmes. Coupons have no cash value, cannot be exchanged or combined unless stated, may be limited to a set number of redemptions, and can be withdrawn or expired at any time before use without notice.

Courses are digital content delivered instantly on Enrolment. You may request a full refund within 48 hours of purchase, provided you have completed less than 20% of the Course's lessons. Outside that window, or once you have completed 20% or more of a Course, it is non-refundable, except where:

• you were charged twice for the same Order;
• a technical fault on our side made the Course inaccessible and we could not fix it within a reasonable time;
• we remove the Course from the Platform after you enrol, for reasons unrelated to your own conduct.

Refunds are processed manually, not automatically in-app. Contact [email protected] with your Order reference to request one, and expect it to take a few business days to reach your mobile money account.

Asking questions, answering them, and posting Shorts are all public or semi-public activity on FarmNetwork. Don't post anything that:

• is false, misleading, or unsafe farming advice presented as fact;
• depicts unsafe agricultural practices, animal cruelty, or otherwise hazardous activity;
• harasses, threatens, impersonates, or discriminates against another person, instructor, or FarmNetwork staff;
• infringes someone else's copyright, trademark, or privacy;
• promotes an illegal product, banned agrochemical, or unlicensed activity;
• is spam, a scam, or unrelated advertising;
• attempts to circumvent payment for a Course, or to scrape, reverse-engineer, or otherwise interfere with the Platform.

This is in addition to, not instead of, Ugandan law, including the Computer Misuse Act and the Electronic Transactions Act. You can report content or another user directly in the app. We may remove content, warn, suspend, or permanently close an account that breaks these rules, at our discretion and without a refund for any Enrolment tied to the violation.

The FarmNetwork name, logo, app, and website design belong to Yukon Software-SMC Ltd. Course content belongs to the Instructor who created it, licensed to us as described in Section 5.4. Anything you post in a question, answer, or Short remains yours, but you grant us a non-exclusive licence to display and distribute it within the Platform, and, unless you tell us otherwise in writing, in FarmNetwork's own promotion of the Platform, as part of that feature working at all.

To operate the Platform we send SMS (for account verification) and push notifications (for order updates, answers to your questions, and review status). These are service messages, not marketing, and you cannot opt out of them while keeping an account.

We use a small number of specialist providers to run the Platform. Each only processes what it needs to do its job:

None of these providers may use your data for their own purposes beyond operating the Platform on our behalf.

We collect your phone number, name, district, and, if you teach, your farming background and the video you upload, to run the Platform, and nothing beyond that. We do not sell your personal data, and we do not show it to other users beyond what a Course or Q&A feature needs to work (your name against a question you asked, for instance). The providers in Section 14 process it only to run the Platform on our behalf, under the same restriction.

You can ask us, at any time, what personal data we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete your account and the data tied to it, subject to what the law and our own record-keeping duties require us to keep (a completed Order, for instance, since it is also a financial record). Our handling of your data is subject to Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019.

This is the summary. Our Privacy Policy is the full account: every category of data we hold, the phone permissions the app asks for and why, how long we keep each thing, and how to have your account deleted.

You may close your account at any time from your profile. We may suspend or close an account that:

• breaks Section 10's conduct rules;
• is used fraudulently, including disputing a genuine mobile money payment;
• we're required to act on by law or by our payment partner.

Closing your account ends future access to paid Courses; it does not entitle you to a refund for Enrolments already used beyond what Section 9 already provides for.

The Platform is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, including that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, particularly given rural network conditions outside our control. To the fullest extent Ugandan law allows, FarmNetwork is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost income, crop loss, or livestock loss, arising from your use of or reliance on the Platform. Our total liability to you under these Terms is capped at the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

We may update these Terms as the Platform grows. For a material change, we'll notify you in-app or by SMS at least 30 days before it takes effect; minor or clarifying changes take effect when we post the new version here with an updated effective date. Continuing to use FarmNetwork after a change takes effect means you accept it.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Uganda. If a dispute arises, we'll first try to resolve it directly in good faith; failing that, it is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Uganda, seated in Kampala.

Questions about these Terms, a Course, or a payment: [email protected].
Yukon Software-SMC Ltd, Uganda.