How to navigate Nation.Africa's paywall

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As we walk this journey together, ours is a commitment to always deliver highly desirable and engaging content worth your time and money.

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The Nation Media Group is undergoing a major digital transformation, and the reader is our focus. This change now brings the reader right into the newsroom and our invitation is to as many of them as possible to join this journey and have a say in the direction of our journalism.

As a reader, you might have already taken note of the changes we have been making lately, especially on our new digital brand, Nation.Africa. Morphed from our old website nation.co.ke, Nation.Africa is dedicated to ensuring that we live up to our commitment to be there for every African. To empower them and carry, project and protect their aspirations by providing highly desirable and engaging content.

Since the launch of Nation.Africa in September last year, we have taken into account the feedback you shared with us on how best we can improve our stories. We have also made new additions to the site. Nation Audio, a podcast section dedicated to bringing you compelling stories in audio form, as well as Nation Puzzles, for you to stretch your mind and sharpen your skills with Sudoku, crosswords and other puzzles.

We are encouraged that 230,000 have already joined this journey by registering on the platform. We are very grateful to every single one of our readers for helping us attain this milestone. And there's more to come. Starting Monday, February 8, 2021, we will roll out a paywall on a new suite of content.

What, exactly, is a paywall?

Simply put, it is an additional layer on a website that allows publishers to sell their content to readers. Think of it as a vending shop, which sells newspapers to readers.

Paywalls come in various forms. This includes a 'hard' paywall, which will only let website visitors access content after paying a subscription fee; a metered paywall that gives readers access to a specified number of articles for free per month before they have to pay; a freemium, or reverse paywall, which lets readers access most of the website content freely while requesting a subscription fee for some in-depth articles and investigative pieces, and finally a hybrid paywall that combines the freemium and the metered approach.

What is our approach?

As a dependable platform, Nation offers millions of readers monthly access to truthful and credible journalism. Being the largest media house in Eastern Africa, we acknowledge the role we play in shaping public opinion. Calling truth to power and exposing the ills in our communities. With this in mind, we chose to go with a hybrid paywall. This allows our readers to access a huge amount of content freely, while at the same time letting readers support our journalism by subscribing to a selection of prime content.

Subsequently, articles older than seven days, which are no longer considered 'news' are now behind a paywall. The motivation behind this is to allow our readers to support our journalism. As the Nation Media Group Editorial Director Mutuma Mathiu said in his opinion last Friday, there is no such thing as free content, you pay for it somehow. The traditional approach has always been to have adverts to subsidise editorial content. 

But the media trend the world over is indicative of a shift towards the paywall model. This is primarily due to how big tech players such as Google and Facebook have broken the traditional model of advertising as a principal source of financing journalism.

As we walk this journey together, ours is a commitment to always deliver highly desirable and engaging content worth your time and money.

How it works

As a first time visitor, you will have access to metered content to access 5 stories before you are asked to register. Thereafter you will have access to an additional 10 stories after which you will then be asked to pay.

There are affordable daily, weekly, monthly and annual plans to choose from. For all our PRIME and archived content, our readers will hit a paywall, regardless of whether they have just visited the site or exhausted their 15 free articles.

How to navigate Nation.Africa's paywall

How to register or subscribe

Registering your details is free, all you require is an email address and a password. You can also sign up using your existing Facebook or Google account.

To become a paying subscriber on Nation.Africa, there are weekly, monthly and annual packages on offer.

So, how does this work? If you are new, you will need to register first (see above). Once registered, select a plan and pick a payment plan.

Expired quota

If you are a registered user and your quota has expired, do not fret. Simply subscribe to our various plans to continue enjoying our quality content. You will be informed when your subscription is due. Renewal is easy in order to allow you to continue enjoying truthful and independent journalism.

To access archived content, you will need to select one of the payment plans above to get unlimited access.

Anonymous readers

If you want to remain anonymous on Nation.Africa, there is still something for you. You will have the option to read five articles every month for free.

For customer care support, email us at [email protected] Or call us on +254 719 038 033/34.

For news stories tips or feedback for our editorial team please reach us on [email protected] or call +254 719 038 430.