What we each agree to.

1. Who this is between

These terms are an agreement between you and Leanstart Africa - Derrick Tawah, Bessemerstraße 51, 12103 Berlin, Germany. That is the registered business address of a sole proprietorship, so the trading name and the person behind it are one legal person. The legal notice has the rest, and the privacy policy covers what happens to information rather than what we each agree to do.

They apply when you make an account, claim an invitation, or use the archive. If you do not accept them, do not use the service; nothing is lost by walking away.

2. What the service is, and what it is not yet

Ukoo Yangu is a private family archive. A family records its own members, the relationships between them, photographs, stories and events, and decides field by field who in that family may see what. There is no public tree, no directory of families, and no way to find a family from outside it.

It is early, and the honest description is on the other pages rather than dressed up here. Sign-in codes and invitations are delivered by email only; WhatsApp and SMS are not wired up. The export does not yet include the photograph files themselves. Neither the export nor deleting a family is a button - both are done on request. The FAQ says what else is and is not ready.

We do not promise the service will be available at any particular time, and this is not a service with an agreed uptime. What we do promise is in section 6.

3. Who may use it

You must be 16 or over to hold an account. Sixteen is the age at which somebody can agree to a service like this for themselves under Article 8 GDPR and section 32 BDSG.

Children appear in family trees, and that is a different thing from holding an account. A parent or guardian may record their own child. Anybody else recording a child should have a parent's agreement, and a parent or guardian can ask us to reduce or remove a child's record at any time.

4. What you are responsible for

This is the section that matters, and it exists because of what a family tree is. Almost everybody in a tree did not put themselves there. Somebody else recorded them: a cousin, a grandmother who has died, a child too young to be asked. When you enter information about another person, you are the one deciding to record it.

• Record only people you have a real family connection to. This is not a place to keep a file on somebody.
• Respect a person's answer about themselves. If a relative asks not to be in the tree, or asks for their details to be reduced or removed, that is their decision and not the family's. We will act on it whether or not the family agrees.
• Upload only photographs you are entitled to share, and remember that the people in them have a say even when you took the picture.
• What you write about somebody is yours, not ours. The archive records what a family enters. It does not check whether a birth year is right, whether a relationship is real, or whether somebody would want it written down. If you record something untrue or hurtful about a living person, that is your act.

You must not use the service to harass anybody, to build a record of somebody who is not your family, to get round a person's own privacy settings, or to try to reach a family you were not invited to. Attempting any of that is grounds for us to end your access under section 8.

5. If you look after a family's tree

A steward keeps a family's archive and can see what relatives have hidden from each other, because somebody accountable for it cannot look after what they cannot see. Two duties come with that, and they are not optional.

• Answer a request within one month. When a relative asks for something about them to be limited or removed, the archive records a deadline on the request itself - one month, because that is what a data protection request is entitled to wherever the family lives. It is a date on a row rather than a note in a guide.
• You cannot decide for somebody else. A steward cannot widen another person's privacy settings, cannot answer a confirmation put to somebody else, and cannot agree on their behalf to a name going on a printed poster. The software refuses all three; this says so as well, because a duty somebody knows about is kept more often than one only a database enforces.

6. What we are responsible for

• Keeping your family's records to your family. Separation between families is enforced by the database rather than by our code remembering to check, and the same mechanism means we cannot read inside your family either - not the proprietor, not anybody running the service. To see a family's tree we would have to be invited to it like anybody else.
• Not selling or sharing it. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not between families, and not to train any model.
• Answering what the law entitles you to ask, within one month. What that covers is in the privacy policy.
• Telling you before the service ends. If we decide to stop running Ukoo Yangu, we will give notice and a copy of your family's data before anything is deleted. A family archive that vanished without warning would be the worst thing this service could do, so it is written down here rather than left to good intentions.

7. What it costs

Nothing, today. There is no subscription and nothing has a price. The wall poster is free during early access and will not always be; the tree itself is not what will be charged for.

If anything is ever sold, the price will be shown before you pay, including tax or stating that none is charged, along with delivery where a physical thing is involved. Nothing will start charging for something you already have without asking you first.

8. Ending it

• You may leave whenever you like, and ask for your account to be deleted. Ask us and it goes.
• A family's owner may delete the whole family, which removes its people, relationships, stories, events, photographs and memberships together. Nobody outside has to approve it and nobody can talk them out of it.
• We may suspend or end access where somebody is doing what section 4 forbids, or where the law requires it. We will say why, in writing, unless we are forbidden from doing so, and a suspension is not a way of avoiding your rights over your own data.
• If we close the service, section 6 applies: notice first, and your data before deletion.

9. Where our liability ends, and where it does not

Said plainly, because a wall of exclusions is usually a sign that most of it would not stand up. Under German law a good deal of it cannot be excluded, and we do not try.

We are fully liable for harm caused intentionally or by gross negligence, and for injury to life, body or health. We are also liable where we break a duty that goes to the heart of this agreement - keeping your family's records to your family is such a duty. None of that is limited by anything below.

Otherwise, for ordinary negligence, our liability is limited to the loss that could typically be expected from this kind of service. Because the service is currently free, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for lost profits, or for data you have not kept a copy of elsewhere.

Nothing here limits any right you have under mandatory consumer law. Where a statute gives you more than this section does, the statute wins.

10. If these terms change

They will, because the service is still being built. Two rules we hold ourselves to.

Nothing changes retroactively. A change applies to what happens after it, not to what you have already done. And where a change would materially affect you - what you may do, what we may do with your information, or what something costs - we will tell you rather than quietly publishing a new version, and you may end the agreement instead of accepting it.

The date this page was last reviewed is at the bottom. Older versions are in the project's public history.

11. Which law applies, and where you can go

German law applies, because that is where the business is registered, and it applies whatever language you are reading. That is not a way of moving you somewhere less protective: if you are a consumer living elsewhere in the European Union, the mandatory protections of your own country still apply to you and nothing here takes them away.

You can bring a claim where you live, and you do not have to come to Berlin to do it. There is no arbitration clause and no waiver of anything. If you think we have handled your information unlawfully you can also complain to a supervisory authority - the privacy policy names which, and says that you do not have to raise it with us first.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

12. Reaching a person

Write to leanstart.africa@gmail.com. It reaches the proprietor rather than a queue, and anything in these terms or the privacy policy is answered by him.

Last reviewed: 23 September 2026.