About Nyirobi

Nyirobi began as a complaint about attention. Everything worth reading was being cut to fit a feed, and everything that fit the feed was forgettable by lunchtime. We wanted somewhere a piece could take twenty minutes when it needed twenty minutes, and where nobody would apologise for it.

So this is a slow magazine. Six genres, three forms, published from Nairobi and read anywhere. Nothing here runs because it will travel, nothing is ranked by an algorithm, and every piece was made by a person whose name is on it.

Three desks

• Essays — long-form argument across philosophy, mind, society, science, culture and history. One idea, followed all the way down.
• Comics — short graphic stories, drawn for the magazine and read in a glance.
• Video — lectures, debates and street conversations, filmed in Nairobi and gathered here in one place.

Four promises, and no small print

A person reads everything

Every submission is read start to finish by an editor, and answered by the same editor. No form letters, no silent rejections, no queue that quietly forgets you.

Writers are paid when readers pay

Not for posting, not for volume, and not in exposure. When a reader buys a writer's paid piece, the writer gets 70% of what reaches us after the payment fee — every sale, for as long as the piece is on sale.

The writer keeps the copyright

We ask for first publication and the right to keep a piece in the archive. Everything else stays with the person who made it.

We measure very little

We count reads so writers can see they are being read and so the front page can show what people are reading. That is the whole reason anything here is measured, and the whole extent of it.

Reader-funded, on purpose

Nyirobi takes no advertising and sells no reader's attention to anyone. It is paid for by the people who read it, and it pays writers out of the same pot.

That is a narrower business than the alternative, and it is the reason the magazine can be edited for readers rather than for a media buyer.

Every sale of a paid piece pays its writer 70% of what reaches us after the payment provider's fee. A free piece is free to read and earns nothing; a paid piece costs Ksh 50.

Where to go next

• Write for us — what we want, what we pay, and how a piece gets from a draft to the front page.
• Support the magazine — reader money is the whole budget. Here is where it goes and how to send some.
• Nyirobi Girl by email — her column in your inbox, every Sunday morning.