Platform Guidelines

AfricaCrowdFund works only if backers can trust what they see and founders can trust the platform they build on. These guidelines set the conduct we expect and the conduct we act against. They sit alongside our Terms & Conditions, and breaking them can lead to content removal, campaign suspension or account action.

• Describe your business, product, team and plans honestly and accurately.
• Set realistic funding goals and reward delivery estimates, and update backers when things change.
• Clearly explain risks and challenges in your campaign — do not hide known problems.
• Use media you have the right to use, and show your real product or progress rather than misleading mock-ups presented as finished goods.
• Never present a rewards campaign as an investment opportunity or promise financial returns.

• Fraud, scams, Ponzi or pyramid schemes, and any campaign designed to deceive backers.
• Equity, debt, lending, interest, profit-share or investment-return offerings — ACF is rewards-based only.
• Unlawful goods or services, or campaigns that facilitate illegal activity in any relevant jurisdiction.
• Hateful, harassing, discriminatory, violent or sexually exploitative content.
• Impersonation of another person, business or organisation, or false claims of affiliation, endorsement, verification or partnership.
• Content that infringes others' intellectual property, privacy or other rights.

• Manipulating campaign signals — for example fake accounts, fake pledges, or pledging to your own campaign to create false momentum.
• Spam, unsolicited bulk promotion, or scraping the platform or its users' data.
• Harassing, threatening or abusing founders, backers or staff, on or off the platform in connection with ACF activity.
• Attempting to bypass verification, moderation or security controls, or misusing the report system to attack legitimate campaigns.
• Misrepresenting your identity, authority to represent a business, or beneficial ownership during verification.

• Communicate honestly and promptly through campaign updates, especially about delays or changes.
• Treat backer information shared with you for reward fulfilment as confidential and use it only for that purpose.
• Do not pressure, guilt-trip or mislead people into pledging.

Every published campaign has a report option. If you see fraud, misrepresentation, abuse or anything that breaks these guidelines, report it with as much detail as you can. Reports are reviewed by the ACF moderation team — deliberately and manually — and reporters' identities are not shown publicly.

Depending on severity, ACF may:

• request changes to a campaign before or after publication,
• reject, unpublish, pause, suspend or cancel a campaign,
• immediately hide content from public view in severe safety or fraud cases, while review continues,
• restrict, suspend or remove accounts, including business verification status,
• retain an internal audit record of significant moderation actions, and where required, cooperate with lawful requests from authorities.

We aim to act proportionately and to explain decisions where practical. Some actions — particularly emergency hides in active fraud or safety situations — may happen first, with explanation following.

If you believe a moderation decision was wrong, or you are unsure whether something is allowed, contact hello@africacrowdfund.com and the team will review it.