Nyirobi
The magazine

About Nyirobi

A magazine of essays, comics and film, made in Nairobi for readers who would rather think than scroll.

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

What we hold to

Four promises, and no small print

  1. 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.

  2. Writers are paid for being read

    Not for posting, not for volume, and not in exposure. A piece earns on every qualified read it gets, for as long as it keeps getting them.

  3. 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.

  4. We measure one thing

    We count reads, because reads are what we pay on. That is the whole reason anything here is measured, and the whole extent of it.

How this is paid for

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.

Where to go next