When we launched Open Country Mag in 2020, and described it as “a multiplatform space,” I had a different idea of what it would look like. We knew where we were headed but the path was not always clear. The timeline was five years. But it has taken two to get us further ahead than we planned on that front.
Last year, we entered a partnership with Folio Media that makes us the publisher of its platform Folio Nigeria, which was online at Folio.ng.
Created in 2018 as CNN’s exclusive media affiliate in Africa, Folio Nigeria covered four broad verticals: culture and entertainment, places and food, business and tech, and traditions and society. I was its editor from May 2020 to May 2021. It later went offline and ended its CNN affiliation.
I had done extensive work at Folio Nigeria, repositioning the brand and taking it to areas most culture platform just weren’t thinking of, so its offline status was uncomfortable for me. It meant that all that work could go down the drain and be forgotten. So I was happy when my former boss, Mr. Fidelis Anosike, accepted to give Open Country Mag these extensive rights to return it online.
This partnership covers only content produced by Folio Nigeria when I was there. Chief among these are profiles of changemakers in over 30 fields from the arts to sports.
Folio Media is the news and content arm of Folio Holdings, which also has business in solar power, investments, and logistics. Folio Media subsidiaries include Times Multimedia; Creative Africa Exchange (CAX); Folio Communications Plc., which owns Daily Times of Nigeria newspaper; Green Girl Company Ltd., which owns the Miss Nigeria pageant; and Folio Digital/Folio Africa, which includes Folio Nigeria.
Folio Media and Open Country Mag entered the agreement in September 2022, and it remains in effect until September 2025.
Here are the first republished stories:
— How Taaooma‘s Family-Based Comedy Skits Made Her a Social Media Phenomenon
— Intissar Bashir-Kurfi Is Collecting Nylon to Save the Environment
— A 17-Year-Old’s Hyper-realistic Portraits, in Charcoal
— Against Sexism, Female Photographers Push Back with Skill
New stories will appear every week. Read them here.
Our homepage now also has a Folio Nigeria section. ♦
If you love Open Country Mag‘s work, please consider making a PayPal donation to enable us to continue redefining perceptions of what an unfunded African media platform can do.
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