Folio Media and Open Country Mag have entered a partnership making the latter the online publisher of Folio Media’s content platform Folio Nigeria, formerly 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. It went offline in 2021 and ended its CNN affiliation. It will now return online, hosted on the website of Open Country Mag, which will republish select pieces.

Folio Media is the news and content arm of Folio Holdings, which also has businesses in clean renewable energy, 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 Holdings is owned by the media entrepreneur Fidelis Anosike.

Open Country Mag is a multiplatform space covering African literature and Nigerian film & TV, with exclusive cover stories on major African writers, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Teju Cole, Damon Galgut, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Chinelo Okparanta, and Maaza Mengiste. Recently, Nollywood superstar Rita Dominic graced its cover. Its founder is the award-winning editor Otosirieze Obi-Young, who previously worked at Folio Media as editor of Folio Nigeria by CNN.

The media partnership covers only content produced by Folio Nigeria when Obi-Young was its editor from 2020 to 2021, under the CNN affiliation. Chief among these are profiles and of changemakers in industries from the arts to sports.

“The Folio brand is about excellent content and Folio Nigeria delivered that,” said Anosike. “Open Country Mag has gained a reputation for the same, so we are happy to work again with Otosirieze to restore it online.”

Obi-Young said: “The stories we did at Folio Nigeria remain important not only for their subject-matter but also because of the different approach and tone that they took. It’s exciting to have them back online on Open Country Mag, which we have been building as a multiplatform space for cultural storytelling. We are happy that Folio Media shares our belief in the consolidation of text content.”

Folio Media and Open Country Mag entered the three-year agreement in September 2022.

Last year, Folio Media signed a content exchange agreement with Korea Herald, South Korea’s widest read English language newspaper. The multimedia company is also preparing to relaunch its lifestyle publication DT Now.

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