Privacy Policy
Last updated: 1 January 2026
Who we are
UmojaScholar is a scholarship matching and application support platform for African students seeking international scholarships. We are operated as an early-stage product. Questions about this policy can be sent to privacy@umojascholars.com.
What we collect and why
| Data | Why we collect it | Stored where |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | Account creation and login via AWS Cognito | AWS Cognito (us-east-1) |
| Name, country, phone (optional) | Personalise your profile and matches | Supabase (PostgreSQL) |
| Academic details (GPA, field, institution) | Power the scholarship matching algorithm | Supabase (PostgreSQL) |
| Essay drafts | Provide AI feedback via Claude Haiku. Stored for your review history. | Supabase (PostgreSQL) |
| Application status | Track your scholarship applications | Supabase (PostgreSQL) |
| Usage analytics (page views, feature use) | Improve the product. No personal identifiers. | Not yet implemented |
What we do not do
- ✓We do not sell your data to third parties.
- ✓We do not share your essay drafts or profile with scholarship organisations.
- ✓We do not use your data to train AI models.
- ✓We do not send marketing emails without your explicit consent.
- ✓We do not store payment information — there is no payment at MVP stage.
Third-party services
We use the following third-party services to operate the platform:
- →AWS Cognito — Authentication and account management Privacy policy ↗
- →Supabase — Database (PostgreSQL) with row-level security Privacy policy ↗
- →Anthropic (Claude) — Essay Co-Pilot AI feedback. Your draft is sent to Anthropic's API and is subject to their usage policy. Privacy policy ↗
- →AWS Amplify Hosting — Web hosting and deployment Privacy policy ↗
Data retention
Your account data is retained for as long as your account is active. You can request deletion of your account and all associated data at any time by emailing privacy@umojascholars.com. We will process deletion requests within 30 days.
Your rights
Depending on your country of residence, you may have rights under GDPR, POPIA (South Africa), or other applicable data protection laws, including:
- Access to the personal data we hold about you
- Correction of inaccurate data
- Deletion of your data (“right to be forgotten”)
- Portability of your data in a machine-readable format
- Objection to processing
To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@umojascholars.com.
Changes to this policy
We will update this policy as the product evolves. Material changes will be notified by email to registered users at least 14 days before taking effect.