“An ambitious new magazine committed to African literature.”
—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Instagram
“Essential content, beautiful production. Readers can get inside the literature, and industry insiders can discover new talent.”
—Bernardine Evaristo on Twitter
I founded Open Country Mag with a pioneering mission: to curate cultural journalism and publish essential, in-depth stories in African literature. I had to because, despite decades of the global recognition, African literature still lacked a reliable journalistic platform that could authoritatively contextualize its stories, ideas, and writers in the global conversation—and in high quality prose. A more immediate reason was the infiltration of Nigerian literature by human rights-abusing politicians. I founded it on 5 May 2020, just after World Press Freedom Day, but we launched on 26 December 2020.
Although we lack funding, our team is a highly dedicated one. We record literary culture in Africa, and are working to make resources and data available for use anywhere, from general reading to academia. Our vision is to build a modern archive of literary culture and histories, contextualized. Our mission is to be a ladder for the next generation of African writers, thinkers, literary journalists, and curators, to provide necessary tools in their development.
From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Teju Cole to Damon Galgut and Tsitsi Dangarembga, the most important literary newsmakers of the last two years have graced our covers. Our debut special issue, The Next Generation (April 2022), profiles 16 writers and curators who have influenced literary culture in the last five years. The covers were designed by Emmimade Studio.
In our first 15 months, we have published 333 pieces: in-depth Profiles, features, news, book excerpts, opportunities, event updates, and much more. This year, we passed 100,000 site views.
You can reach out to us at editors@opencountrymag.com or pitch us a proposal at business@opencountrymag.com. You can also follow us and connect on social media:
Visit opencountrymag.com.