Terms & Conditions

1. Who we are, and what this document does #

Noir is the platform operated by [REGISTERED LEGAL NAME], established in Ghana, of [POSTAL / CONTACT ADDRESS, Accra, Ghana]. In this document "Noir", "we", "us" and "our" mean that body. "You" means anyone who uses the platform.

These Terms & Conditions form a binding agreement between you and Noir. They apply every time you visit the site, create an account, apply for work, enrol in training, list an item for sale, or buy something.

Two further documents form part of this agreement and are incorporated into it by reference:

• our Privacy Policy, which explains what personal data we hold and why; and
• our Platform Policies, which contain the operational detail — refunds, prohibited items, community standards, and how appeals work.

If any of those documents conflicts with these Terms, these Terms take precedence, except on a subject the other document deals with specifically — refunds, for example, are governed by the Refunds & Returns Policy.

If you do not agree to these Terms, please do not use the platform.

2. Definitions #

The platform serves several kinds of user, and the rules differ by role. Where these Terms use a capitalised word, it means:

• Creative — a member whose skills have been reviewed by us and who appears in the public Talent Directory.
• Job Seeker — a member who has registered to apply for listed jobs but has not claimed a creative skill, and who is not listed in the Talent Directory.
• Trainee — someone enrolled in a Noir training programme or cohort.
• Employer — an organisation or individual using the platform to list work, book Creatives, or manage engagements.
• Seller — any user who has opened a shop in Uni Market.
• Buyer — any user who places an order in Uni Market.
• Content — anything you upload or submit: profile details, photographs, gallery work, showreels, CVs, product listings, messages, and reviews.
• Engagement — a booking or assignment arranged through the platform between an Employer and a Creative.

One person may hold several roles at once. A Trainee may also be a Seller; a Creative may also be a Buyer. The rules for each role apply to you in each capacity.

3. Eligibility and age #

To open an account and use the platform on your own behalf you must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into a contract.

Some Noir training programmes are open to applicants aged 16 and 17. If you are in that group, you may only enrol with the express consent of a parent or legal guardian, who must accept these Terms on your behalf and provide the emergency contact details we ask for at enrolment. We may ask for evidence of that consent, and we may refuse or withdraw an enrolment where it is not provided.

Users under 18 may not open a shop in Uni Market, receive payouts, be booked for paid engagements, or enter into contracts with Employers through the platform.

We do not knowingly permit anyone under 16 to register. If we learn that we hold an account or personal data belonging to a child under 16, we will close the account and delete the data — see the Children section of the Privacy Policy.

4. Your account #

You must give accurate, current information when you register, and keep it up to date. Much of what we do — matching you to work, verifying a purchase, paying you out — depends on that information being correct.

You are responsible for keeping your password secure and for everything that happens under your account. Tell us immediately at [hello@noirgh.com] if you believe someone else has gained access to it.

You may hold only one account per role. Creating additional accounts to evade a suspension, inflate ratings, or manipulate reviews is a serious breach of these Terms.

You may choose a public username for your profile. Usernames must not impersonate another person or organisation, must not be offensive, and must not be chosen to mislead. We may reclaim a username that breaches this, is dormant, or infringes someone else's rights.

You can close your account at any time by contacting us. Closure does not erase records we are required to keep — see Section 19 and the retention section of the Privacy Policy.

5. Vetting, verification and what it does not mean #

Creatives are reviewed before they appear in the Talent Directory, and some shops carry a verified marker. These checks are a reasonable effort on our part, not a guarantee.

Specifically, vetting or verification does not mean that we warrant a person's identity, qualifications, skill, honesty, right to work, or the quality or safety of anything they sell. We do not carry out criminal record checks or professional licence checks unless we say so explicitly for a particular programme.

Employers remain responsible for their own due diligence and for meeting their obligations as an employer or engager of services. Buyers remain responsible for satisfying themselves about a seller and an item before purchase.

We may add, withhold, or remove a verification marker at our discretion, and we may re-review any account at any time.

6. Public profiles and the Talent Directory #

If you are a Creative, your profile is public. It can be viewed by anyone on the internet and may be indexed by search engines. That includes your name or nickname, photograph, institution, general area, skills, availability, biography, gallery work, ratings and completed job count.

Your phone number, email address, date of birth and CV file are not published on your public profile. They are shared with an Employer only in connection with an application or engagement you have entered into. The Privacy Policy sets out exactly which fields are public, field by field.

You control what you publish. You can edit or remove your gallery, change your biography, or ask us to unlist you from the Talent Directory at any time. Unlisting hides you from the public directory; it does not close your account or end engagements already under way.

Because profiles are public, please do not put anything in a free-text field — biography, gallery caption, product description — that you would not want indexed, cached, or screenshotted. We cannot recall a copy someone else has already taken.

7. Jobs, applications and engagements #

Employers may list opportunities and Creatives and Job Seekers may apply. When you apply, the details on your application — including your CV where you have supplied one — are shared with that Employer.

Applications move through a pipeline (received, vetting, qualified, forwarded, hired or rejected). We may screen or decline to forward an application, and we are not obliged to give reasons. Listing a job does not oblige an Employer to hire, and applying does not oblige us to forward you.

Noir is not a party to the working relationship. Where an Employer engages a Creative, the contract for that work is between the Employer and the Creative. Noir arranges the introduction, provides the scheduling and documentation tools, and may collect and settle payment — but we are not the employer, we are not an employment agency acting as principal, and we do not accept the obligations of either.

Each party is responsible for its own tax, social security, and regulatory obligations arising from an engagement. Nothing on this platform creates a partnership, joint venture, or employment relationship between you and Noir.

Where an engagement is arranged through the platform, both parties agree to deal with each other in good faith: to turn up, to give reasonable notice of a cancellation, and to pay what was agreed. Cancellation expectations are set out in the Bookings & Cancellations Policy.

Do not take an engagement off-platform to avoid fees. Where we introduced you to a counterparty through the platform, arranging the same work privately to circumvent our fees is a breach of these Terms and may result in suspension.

8. Uni Market #

Uni Market lets users open a shop and sell to other users. It is a venue. The following is the most important thing in this section:

When you buy an item in Uni Market, your contract of sale is with the Seller, not with Noir. The Seller is responsible for describing the item accurately, for having the legal right to sell it, for its quality and safety, and for fulfilling the order.

Sellers agree that they will: describe items honestly, including any faults; hold the legal right to sell what they list; set out their own delivery, pickup and returns terms clearly; fulfil orders within the time they state; honour the refund rules in the Refunds & Returns Policy; and comply with the list of prohibited items. Sellers must not list anything they cannot lawfully sell in Ghana.

Buyers agree to provide accurate delivery details, to pay for what they order, to collect or accept delivery within a reasonable time, and to raise problems through the platform in the first instance rather than off-platform.

We do not inspect, test, or take possession of the items listed. We do not warrant their quality, safety, legality, or fitness for any purpose. We may remove a listing, suspend a shop, or cancel an order where we reasonably believe these Terms or our Policies have been broken.

Items sold through Uni Market carry the statutory protections that Ghanaian law gives buyers, including under the Sale of Goods Act, 1962 (Act 137) and the Electronic Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772). Nothing in these Terms removes a right you have by law.

9. Payments, fees, and how money moves #

Card and mobile money payments are processed by Paystack. We do not see or store your full card number. Paystack handles the card data under its own terms and its own PCI-DSS compliance.

How marketplace money moves — please read this carefully. When a Buyer pays for an order, the funds are received into a Noir-operated Paystack account and are then settled to the Seller. In doing this, Noir acts as the Seller's limited payment collection agent: we collect the price on the Seller's behalf, and the Buyer's payment obligation to the Seller is discharged when we receive the funds. Being the collecting party does not make Noir the seller of the item, and it does not transfer the Seller's obligations to us.

Settlement to Sellers is made to the mobile money details on the shop record. It is your responsibility as a Seller to keep those details accurate; we are not liable for funds sent to a number you gave us incorrectly. We may hold a settlement where an order is disputed, where we suspect fraud, or where we are required to by law.

Platform fee. We may charge a commission on marketplace sales and a fee on engagements. Any fee applied to an order is shown on the order before payment and on the Seller's earnings record. The commission rate currently applied to marketplace orders is zero; if that changes we will give notice under Section 20 before it applies to new orders.

Prices are in Ghana Cedis (GHS) and include any tax that we are required to charge unless stated otherwise. Sellers are responsible for their own tax obligations on their sales.

Refunds are governed by the Refunds & Returns Policy. Where a refund is due, it is returned by the route the payment came in.

10. Training programmes #

We run training programmes organised into cohorts, with modules, lessons, materials and assessments. Where a programme has a fee, joining instructions and payment terms are given at enrolment.

Training materials are provided for your personal learning. You may not redistribute, resell, publish, or share them outside your cohort without our written permission.

You are expected to attend, to submit your own work, and to treat other trainees and facilitators with respect. Submitting work that is not your own, or sharing assessment answers, may result in removal from a programme without refund.

We may change a programme's schedule, facilitators, syllabus, or delivery format where we need to. If we cancel a paid programme outright before it starts, we will refund the fee.

Completing a Noir programme does not guarantee employment, a booking, entry to the Talent Directory, or any particular income. Any figures we publish about past outcomes are descriptive, not a promise about yours.

11. Your content, and the licence you give us #

You keep ownership of your Content. Your photographs, showreels, gallery work, writing and product images remain yours.

To operate the platform we need permission to use it. By uploading Content you grant Noir a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, resize, adapt for display, and publicly display that Content for the purpose of operating, securing and promoting the platform and your presence on it. That includes showing your work in the Talent Directory, on your profile and gallery, in Uni Market listings, and in reasonable promotional use of the platform such as social posts featuring work published on it.

This licence lasts for as long as you keep the Content on the platform, and ends within a reasonable period after you delete it — except for copies retained in backups, and except where the Content is part of a record we must keep, such as an image attached to a completed order.

If you would rather we did not use your work in promotional material, tell us at [hello@noirgh.com] and we will honour that. It does not affect your account.

You confirm that you own or have permission to upload everything you post, that it does not infringe anyone else's rights, and that any identifiable person in a photograph has agreed to appear in it. Copyright complaints are handled under the Content & Copyright Policy.

12. Acceptable use #

The detailed standards are in the Community & Acceptable Use Policy. In summary, you must not:

• harass, threaten, defame, or discriminate against anyone, or post hateful or sexually exploitative material;
• impersonate another person, or misrepresent your identity, skills or affiliation;
• post false, misleading, or deliberately incomplete listings;
• manipulate ratings or reviews, whether your own or anyone else's;
• use the platform to solicit users into schemes, spam, or off-platform payment arrangements designed to avoid our protections;
• upload malware, scrape the site at scale, probe or bypass our security, or attempt to access another user's account or data;
• use automated means to create accounts, place orders, or send messages; or
• break Ghanaian law, or use the platform to help someone else do so.

Messaging tools — direct messages, channels, and comments — are for platform business and community. Do not use them to send unsolicited bulk marketing.

13. Reviews and ratings #

Marketplace reviews can only be left by a Buyer who actually bought the item, on a completed order, once per order line. This is enforced by the platform, not merely by policy.

Reviews must be your own honest experience. You must not offer or accept payment, discounts, free items, or any other benefit in exchange for a review; write reviews of your own shop; or use another account to do so.

Sellers may publicly reply to a review. Sellers cannot edit or delete a review — only Noir can remove one, and only where it breaches the Reviews Policy, for example because it contains personal data, abuse, or content unrelated to the transaction.

We do not remove a review simply because it is negative.

14. Our intellectual property #

The platform itself — the software, design, layout, graphics, text we have written, and the Noir name and marks — belongs to Noir or our licensors and is protected under the Copyright Act, 2005 (Act 690) and other applicable law.

You may use the platform for its intended purpose. You may not copy, adapt, reverse-engineer, resell, or create derivative works from it, or use our name or marks without written permission, except to refer to Noir factually.

15. Third-party services and links #

The platform relies on services operated by others, including Paystack for payments, Google for calendar scheduling and web fonts, and YouTube and Vimeo for embedded video. Using those features means your data is also handled by those providers under their own terms and privacy policies. The Privacy Policy lists each one.

We may link to other websites. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content, their products, or how they handle your data.

16. Availability of the platform #

We work to keep the platform available, but we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free service. We may suspend access for maintenance, upgrades, or to deal with a security problem, and we will give notice where we reasonably can.

We may change, add, or withdraw features. If we withdraw something you actively rely on — a whole product area rather than a cosmetic change — we will give reasonable notice.

17. Disclaimers and limitation of liability #

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited under Ghanaian law. Your statutory rights as a consumer are not affected.

Subject to that, and to the fullest extent the law allows:

• the platform is provided "as is", without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied;
• we are not liable for the acts or omissions of other users — including an Employer who does not pay, a Creative who does not attend, or a Seller who does not deliver;
• we are not liable for the quality, safety, legality, or description of items listed in Uni Market;
• we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of business, loss of opportunity, loss of goodwill, or loss of data; and
• our total liability to you for all claims arising in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of (a) the total fees and commission we actually received from you in that period, and (b) GHS 1,000.

Disputes between users about an engagement or an order are between those users. We will help where we reasonably can — we hold the order record, the messages, and the payment trail — but we are not an arbitrator and our decision on a dispute does not affect either party's legal rights.

18. Your indemnity to us #

If someone brings a claim against Noir because of something you did — Content you uploaded, an item you sold, a person you injured in the course of an engagement, or a breach of these Terms — you agree to cover our reasonable losses, costs and legal fees arising from it.

This does not apply to the extent the claim results from our own breach or negligence, and we will tell you promptly about any claim we intend to rely on this section for.

19. Suspension and termination #

You may stop using the platform, or ask us to close your account, at any time.

We may suspend or close your account, remove Content, delist a profile, or withhold a settlement where we reasonably believe you have broken these Terms or our Policies, where we are required to by law, or where continuing would expose other users or us to a real risk of harm or loss.

Except where the breach is serious or where we are legally prevented from doing so, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond. The appeal route is in the Suspension & Appeals Policy.

On closure: your public profile and listings come down; orders and engagements already in progress are settled or cancelled fairly; money properly owed to you is still paid; and we keep the records we are required to keep, for the periods set out in the Privacy Policy.

Sections that by their nature should survive the end of this agreement do survive it — including 11 (to the extent of retained records), 14, 17, 18 and 21.

20. Changes to these Terms #

We may update these Terms. The version number and date at the top of this page always show the current version.

For minor changes — clarifications, corrections, new features that do not change your rights — the updated version applies from the date it is published.

For material changes, including any change to fees, liability, or how disputes are handled, we will give you at least 14 days' notice by email or an in-platform notice before the change takes effect. If you do not accept the change, you may close your account before it takes effect. Continuing to use the platform after that date means you accept the new version.

Changes never apply retrospectively to an order already placed or an engagement already agreed.

21. Governing law and disputes #

These Terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the laws of the Republic of Ghana, and the courts of Ghana have jurisdiction.

Before going to court, please raise the problem with us at [hello@noirgh.com] so we can try to resolve it. Most disputes are resolved this way, and it is far faster for everyone.

If a court finds any part of these Terms unenforceable, that part is severed and the rest continues to apply. If we do not enforce a right immediately, we do not lose it.

You may not transfer your rights under these Terms to someone else without our consent. We may transfer ours — for example if the business is restructured — provided your rights are not reduced.

22. How to contact us #

General enquiries and complaints: [hello@noirgh.com]
Privacy and data protection: [privacy@noirgh.com]
Phone: [+233 XX XXX XXXX]
Post: [REGISTERED LEGAL NAME], [POSTAL / CONTACT ADDRESS, Accra, Ghana]

We aim to acknowledge messages within 2 working days and to resolve them within 14 days. If something will take longer, we will tell you why.