Grow One Africa

You have to be 18 years old minimum to join any of the GOA associated clubs (some clubs are only open to those over 21 years of age).

Open the ‘Clubs’ tab on the GOA website, look at the map to find the club closest to you. If there is more than one GOA associated club close to you, then open the link to the list of all clubs which will give you more information about each club and what they offer.

Travel to the club of your choice and speak to the Club Compliance Officer. They can assist you through the required steps to join their private club :

1. Watch the New Members Application Video
2. Complete the New Members Application Form
3. If you have done you application online and not at the club itself - please contact the Club Compliance Officer to confirm if they have approved or denied your application
4. If approved, you will need to go to the club and submit your personal details - a signature, copy of your ID document and selfie photo
5. Pay your membership fees to confirm your membership and receive your GOA membership number
6. Complete a Needs Assessment Form, so that the club knows what cannabis products you require (we don’t share this info with anyone outside of the GOA group but it is necessary for our cultivating members, so they know how much to grow!)

Steps 1 and 2 of the application process can be done via the GOA website (see 'What do I need to do to become a club member?' question).

Please follow up directly with the club that you have applied to, should you have any queries regarding the status of your application. (Contact details for all our Clubs are available under the 'Clubs' tab on the website).

To confirm your membership, you will physically need to go to the club to capture your personal details (signature, copy of your ID and selfie photo) and pay your membership fees.

You will then receive your unique GOA membership number!

(PS - Alternatively, a member can arrange to sign up remotely, in which case the Club Compliance Officer will send them the remote sign up link to capture their ID, selfie photo and signature.)

When a member signs up with a club, by submitting their application, they request to become part of the system. The club then will confirm their application by verifying their signature and photo along with their ID number on the system. This photo and signature will be uploaded on the system and will be a means of identifying the member when they visit their club or any other GOA club.

However, the most important reason why the ID, signature and photo verification is necessary, is that they will be used in the contracts that are created between the member as a sharing member and the cultivating member of the club. These lease agreements and employment contracts that are all generated on the system, use these details as verification for the contracts.

Each club has different membership fees depending on what facilities they offer.

You will benefit from being a club member by having access to the club as a private space where you can :

• Access the cannabis sharing station (if you are a sharing member)
• Access the cannabis consumption area (if available) and smoke your shared cannabis freely
• Know that the bud tender at the sharing station has both experience & knowledge
• Access club facilities - safe environment, entertainment, retail merchandise
• Access club events and workshops
• Cast your vote as part of the club at the next annual club meeting
• Meet like-minded people in your local community
• Know you are assisting in the sustainable agri-economy of cannabis in SA - Grow one Africa assists all of the clubs & club cultivators with paying their taxes
• Access to all the sister clubs in the Grow One Africa network (please note that certain clubs have a day visitors fee)

No, the clubs that are associated with Grow one Africa are not part of a franchise.

GOA is a service provider to our clubs, providing a Cannabis Grow Club Model with stringent compliance measures which works within the current cannabis legislation in South Africa. We focus on responsible cannabis use, sharing and cultivation, while offering full traceability of the cannabis from seed to social club member.

Each club is independently owned and operated using the model provided by GOA. Not all clubs offer the same facilities - most (but not all) have: an on-consumption area where you can smoke the cannabis that is available from the sharing station; food and drink available; cannabis related merchandise for sale and a communal space for socialising, events and workshops etc.

As soon as the club has approved your application and you go to the club and submit your signature, copy of your ID document and selfie photo.

Here are some of the measures in place:

• Members are only allowed to share 90g maximum at any one time, as transporting more than this amount at once is illegal (100g is the limit).
• While all Grow one Africa associated clubs promote responsible cannabis use, members are not limited to the amounts they’re allowed to share. However we do keep a record of all sharing transactions.
• When flower is initially allocated to a member, the Member’s Needs Assessment and the 30 day usage is considered in the allocation of tags (obviously there is some give for members who have filled in the member’s need’s assessment incorrectly, because they never realised how much they smoked; or if they were embarrassed to fill their form in truthfully, etc). So it’s very important for a member’s Need Assessment to be updated, as this should be considered in the club’s cultivation plan.
• It is up to the discretion of the Bud Tender to alert the club committee if a member’s sharing doesn’t seem right. The Compliance Officer can then check the sharing history of the member on the portal to see if the member’s sharing seems irregular. If the Compliance Officer feels that the member’s sharing needs further investigation, they can alert GOA and we will investigate further.

We deeply value and respect the privacy of every members' personal information.

Member details are stored in an encrypted database on a dedicated server with strict firewall settings strongly restricting access. A member's full details are only visible to the relevant staff at their club through a secure application which makes use of several security features built in from the ground up. To further satisfy our paranoia an additional top layer of security is provided by a well reputed proprietary full stack security solution which incorporates machine learning to protect from even the latest threats.

Whilst we have deliberately maintained some vagueness, we hope this short answer is enough to keep your mind at ease that your data is secure.

All personal details (name and contact details) are replaced with the word CANCELLED, the ID number is replaced with the date and time they were cancelled. We keep their valid until date and original registration dates as there is sharing history associated with them. We can then tell that there was a member there due to POPI, but can't tell you who. We keep the Needs assessment, as there are no personal details on it, and this along with the sharing history and cancelled details is used to justify plants having been in the system.

Yes. If you do not pay your membership fee, your membership will automatically be cancelled 3 months after the last day of your valid membership.

Your membership could also be cancelled if you are found to be breaking any of the club rules.

Grow one Africa will report any person to the SAPS that is guilty of any criminal misconduct ie dealing - buying/selling of cannabis. Grow one Africa will also act as witness for the State in a criminal case against any person that uses the GOA Model, associated systems or facilities to conduct any criminal activity.

Firstly, you won’t be cultivating cannabis for Grow one Africa, you will be employed by one of our club members to cultivate on their behalf. You have to become a club member to become a Cultivating or Processing Member. (A Processing Member is someone who takes the cured cannabis flower, grown by a compliant cultivator, and makes it into an extract/and or edible product.)

Once you are a member at a GOA associated club then you need to discuss with the Club Compliance Officer what your cultivation skill/processing experience is, so that they can assess if your particular skill(s) match up with their club members needs. In the Grow one Africa Cannabis Social Club Model - Supply follows demand.

This means that the club members need to establish a demand first, before cultivators can supply them. If the club does require new cultivators, then they will assist you with getting your site compliant for cultivation and/or processing.

No. Selling of cannabis is still illegal in South Africa.

No buying or selling of cannabis takes place at Grow one Africa associated clubs. Only cannabis which has been grown by a compliant cultivator from seed through to harvest, using our track and trace tagging system, can be shared between club members.

Once you are a certified CPM (Cultivating/Processing Member) for your club, you will be allocated a fixed number of plants to grow based on what the needs of that club is. (You can cultivate for members at multiple clubs if there is enough demand).

There is a lease agreement and a limited employment agreement between the OM (owner member) of the plant(s) and the CPM (you).

The CPM then gets reimbursed based on the contracting for the lease of the portion the plant was cultivated on and the salary paid based on the work that was performed in cultivating, harvesting and curing the OMs plant. So therefore there is no reimbursement for the plant itself but rather for the space it occupied and the time it takes to make it available to the OM.

The owner member of the plant that was cultivated, needs to reimburse the CPM (Cultivating/ Processing Member). If they should choose to share it with the other members there is a sharing agreement that allows the other members of the club to help the owner member collect all the relevant monies owed to the CPM that cultivated their plant.

Grow one Africa does a recon on the stock that each cultivator sent to the club(s) during a cycle 21st to 20th of each month. GOA collects the CPMs reimbursements from the club and then deducts the relevant taxes (to be SARS compliant) and pays over the net amount by EFT each month.

The CPM (Cultivating Processing Member) needs to take all of their relevant costs into consideration to determine what it would cost them per gram, to cultivate a plant for another member.

Your Club Compliance Officer can also advise what other cultivators receive for a similar product and if your reimbursement calculations are justified.

Yes. It costs more for equipment, cultivation supplies and electricity to cultivate indoors.

Once a CPM (Cultivating/Processing member) is certified as compliant, a Cultivation Plan needs to be submitted to the compliance officer of the club they are cultivating for.

The CO (Compliance Officer) will then discuss the needs of the members with the CPM in order to determine what type of cultivation and what strains are required. This then links the CPM up with potential OMs (Owner Members) to cultivate for, should there be available members.

This is determined by the club based on how many members they have and how many of them are already being cultivated for by other CPMs (Cultivating/Processing Members).

The plants being cultivated are not reliant on the space the CPM has available, but rather the needs of the members at the club. A CPM can have space to cultivate a 100 plants on their compliant site, but the club may only have 10 members available to cultivate for, at a certain time.

You need a minimum of 3 people as founding members to register the NPC.

You will then need 5 people to be your committee members. Your founding members can be a part of this committee. So all in all, you'll need a minimum of 5 people to open a club.

Your property needs to be zoned for business rights. If your property is correctly zoned and you are able to meet GOA's club compliance measures, this is a possibility.

No. GOA clubs are independently owned. GOA are a regulatory company and set the protocols and compliance measures in place, according to our model, and assist the clubs with reaching compliance.

Once the club is compliant, GOA becomes a service provider, offering services such as: Track and Tracing systems, a Point of Sharing system, Compliance and System support, the Facilitation and Administration of all contracting, monthly Financial administration... to mention just a few of GOA's club services.

SA has no law yet. Internationally it is between 180m (600 feet, California) and 700m (recommended in Canada).

We are aiming for: An acceptable distance from a school, or other institution where minors gather regularly, with the the consumption area at least 200m from the Institution's entrance, and the club positioned and obscured in such a way, as to not cause a hindrance to the institution, as well as adhering to all signage and privacy compliance measures.

All staff members at GOA clubs need to be GOA members as well. They can be non-sharing members, which means that they do not want or have to share any product. You need a member number to create a login for your club staff on the GOA Portal.

The breakdown of the services that GOA renders are as follows:

GOA services:

• Grow Club Compliance Model and Constitutional Framework
• Cultivation- and Processing SOPs
• New Member Application Form
• Member Needs Assessment Form
• Cultivation- and Processing planning on GOA code Sheet
• Cultivating- and Processing Member Application Form
• Cannabis product review forms
• Club, Cultivating- and Processing member Compliance reports

Systems for:

• Member database and membership management tool
• Facilitate agreements between members, clubs and GOA: General-, Deed of Donation, Lease-, Limited Duration Employment-, Sharing Agreement
• Cultivation and Processing track and traceability and to record all inputs
• Facilitation of Request, Dispatch, Receiving of cannabis
• Calculation of total reimbursement costs per gram of cannabis in relation to associated lease, salary, storage, admin, sharing and facilitation
• Management of Cannabis sharing
• Collection of reimbursements
• Cannabis stock control
• Monthly reconciliation
• Monthly Invoice to clubs for total reimbursement costs of shared cannabis
• Monthly Processing and payment of lease invoices for cultivation- and processing areas
• Monthly Issue payslips and pay cultivating- and processing member salaries
• Pay all associated taxes on behalf of members (PAYE, UIF)
• Issue IRP5 to cultivating- and processing members

Subscriptions invoiced monthly (All fees include VAT):

• Non-sharing member R5/m/m
• Sharing Member R10/m/m
• Cultivating-/Processing Member R20/m/m

GOA services:

• Grow Club Compliance Model and Constitutional Framework
• Cultivation- and Processing SOPs
• New Member Application Form
• Member Needs Assessment Form
• Cultivation- and Processing planning on GOA code Sheet
• Cultivating- and Processing Member Application Form
• Cannabis product review forms
• Club, Cultivating- and Processing member Compliance reports
• Systems for:
• Member database and membership management tool
• Facilitate agreements between members, clubs and GOA: General-, Deed of Donation, Lease-, Limited Duration Employment-, Sharing Agreement
• Cultivation and Processing track and traceability and to record all inputs
• Facilitation of Request, Dispatch, Receiving of cannabis
• Calculation of total reimbursement costs per gram of cannabis in relation to associated lease, salary, storage, admin, sharing and facilitation
• Management of Cannabis sharing
• Collection of reimbursements
• Cannabis stock control
• Monthly reconciliation
• Monthly Invoice to clubs for total reimbursement costs of shared cannabis
• Monthly Processing and payment of lease invoices for cultivation- and processing areas
• Monthly Issue payslips and pay cultivating- and processing member salaries
• Pay all associated taxes on behalf of members (PAYE, UIF)
• Issue IRP5 to cultivating- and processing members

A member can only be a member of one club, but if they should want to join another club, we do a transfer from our side, and transfer the member number to the new club.

In this way, GOA and the new club have the member's record of the sharing history, contracts, etc.

The financial compliance needs to be performed independently to make sure that all the accounting was correctly and timeously performed. This is to give the members of the club and GOA the surety that the club is not mismanaging their funds. This service is performed by a GOA appointed independent party.