Africa is the world’s youngest continent with an average age of 19, so it makes sense news companies would prioritise reaching these consumers.

During the recent INMA Africa Audience Development Summit, executives from The Republic, Nation Media Group, and Independent IOL detailed how they are reaching and keeping these young audiences (for more on the topic, follow the new INMA Young Audiences Initiative in 2026).

The Republic (Nigeria) attracts young audiences with print

The Republic is a young media company, founded by Wale Lawal in 2018. For a news publisher startup in the digital age, Lawal said he is often asked, “Why print?”

“We’re not doing anything that hasn’t already been invented ... tapping into young audiences isn’t necessarily rocket science” he told INMA members at the summit. “It’s often about just starting with what you have, looking for those low-hanging fruits, and building on those.”

The Republic started as a student journal, earning audience trust as a leading source of unrivalled coverage of Nigerian and broader African issues, giving comprehensive analyses of the news.

“We were starting at a time when digital media was already saturated,” Lawal said. “The Nigerian media market is very advanced, and I think that print is one of those things that helped us to stand out very quickly.”

From its student journal beginnings, The Republic has changed dramatically, adding to the rigorous journalism and analysis that is at its core with AI voice technology and licensing as a service, among other things.

“What we’re trying to do is really just build an information ecosystem, and young people play a critical role in that.”

The model of print-first and digital-second allows them to strategically innovate around their own distribution, Lawal said.

With the digital media space being so overcrowded, it’s hard to stand out the way The Republic is able to in print. People are looking to slow down, he said, and young people in particular are looking to move away from bite-sized content to consume news they’re interested in.

“They are looking for other ways beyond social media to get access to the news,” he said. “I think another misconception about young people is they don’t care about serious topics. We do. The difference is we want to see those topics created and led by young people, or at least have youth representation when talking about those topics.”

In response, The Republic designed an entire news experience that catered to young African audiences. The brand image was stylish and cool.

Early on, the team realised that offline engagement was very important to the audience. Events, pop-ups, working with libraries and universities, running workshops were all methods The Republic utilises to productise its own media and create an experience out of it rather than simply a transaction.

Just because The Republic is print-first does not mean it isn’t digital savvy. Everything is still available online, with QR codes and data tracking used. Social media is also an important part of audience touchpoints, though it isn’t the primary delivery method.

“We have decreasing control over social media,” Lawal said. “We still want to have much more control over our distribution. But the guiding philosophy is that we need to meet our audiences wherever they are.”

Lawal shared a print campaign created for the podcast that achieved high engagement. 

“We printed 634 magazines that went to over 500 readers, and we were able to get unique scans of over 300. That showed us that we had an almost 60% engagement rate on the podcast through just that print experiment.”

The QR code technology doesn’t just give The Republic general data but granular as well. It enables the team to see the countries and cities the user is coming from and to track university and event data — all the way down to device.

“The critical thing that guides our work is just making it a very design-oriented magazine. It should feel like an object, especially if we feel young people are disconnected from the news. One way to get their attention is to invest in things like the cover.”

The long-term goal is not just reaching the young audience but to earn their attention over time. While print is the introductory focus, users can also listen to articles through AI text-to-speech, as well as watch videos, listen to the podcast, and engage in interactive experiences such as polls — all through QR codes in the print product.

Nation Media Group (Kenya) grows young audiences

James Smart, managing editor at Nation Media Group, echoed Lawal, saying many young people are interested in politics, policy, and what’s happening culturally in Kenya.

“They’re worried about their future in ways that perhaps the media did not pick up on.”

The stories Nation publishes, however, aren’t just political stories. They’re also art and entertainment — various content types Smart said are all deeply connected. Among the 15-24 age group, 79% have high Internet usage and daily engagement, with 97% using the Internet every day.

“The way we leverage that and make the platform work for this is to make sure they actually own the space,” Smart said.

Their content values are:

• Authenticity: Youth distrust overly polished or corporate-sounding messaging. They respond better to raw, real, relatable storytelling.

• Culture relevance: Stories produced in local languages, trends, and memes resonate strongly.

• Social impact: They value content that addresses real issues such as gender equality, youth empowerment, and political accountability.

YouTube is their most-used social media platform (93%), followed by TikTok (63%), Snapchat (60%), and Instagram (59%). They favour short-form, interactive content over TV broadcast news and traditional long-form journalism. WhatsApp is a key channel for news circulation and peer sharing in African communities.

To reach this young audience, NMG hired Gen Z content creators to bring fresh perspectives and insights for stories that resonate with their peers. This team identifies articles and transforms them into engaging videos, taking over the TikTok and other social channels. 

“In the last eight months, they have delivered audiences that we would never reach. They have delivered stories in ways that we traditional journalists would not have been able to deliver,” Smart said.

These learnings have informed other insights, such as this age group’s affinity for podcasts that fit their lifestyle. The “host-listener” relationship builds trust, and the 31 NMG podcasts engage this young audience through multi-platform accessibility.

Content such as podcasts and short-form video has resulted in higher engagement and new advertising opportunities, as well as giving a 5% boost to subscription conversions, Smart said: “Our vision is really to expand and extend that.”

Independent IOL (South Africa) focuses on where young audiences consume content

The Independent invites young audiences into its spaces, making sure they are represented and feel like part of the team. 

“We play in the attention economy,” Lance Witten, editor-in-chief at Independent IOL, told INMA members. “We’re no longer just competing with other news media publishers. We’re competing for our users’ attention.”

The Independent has essentially lost its means of production and distribution, Witten said: “We used to print and deliver our own papers and distribute our content in that way. The distribution mechanisms are now owned by big tech companies … we have to play by their rules and figure out how to gain the algorithm.”

Instead of trying to create content that drives traffic or acquires audiences back to the original Independent platforms, the team focuses on finding new audiences for those spaces.

The first step was to identify those opportunities where that potential audience is the most active. The younger audience plays in very specific spaces, Witten said.

• WhatsApp.

• TikTok (used as a search engine).

• YouTube (making a comeback).

The team developed the strategy around this, understanding not all platforms are created equal but rather each is used for a specific purpose. This was done through gathering data, testing, perfecting, and iterating.

“You can launch a product on these platforms and if it doesn’t work, you can kill it and start something new. They’re very low overhead costs and very low investment so you can test.”

Through that strategy, The Independent has experienced phenomenal growth in 2025. Its WhatsApp channel has grown to over 15,000 followers who are very engaged. This content is also repurposed to YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.

The YouTube channel has grown to over 14,000 subscribers. Heavy engagement is seen around serious topics, such as the livestreaming of police commissioner and parliamentary committee investigations.

Witten is most proud of the TikTok channel, which has grown to over 560,000 followers — making it the largest news publisher on the platform in South Africa.

“Part of the strategy has been inviting younger team members in,” he said. They have an entirely different perspective on events such as 9/11, which occurred before most of them had even been born.

“It’s important to have that fresh mindset, to have those younger content creators that are not only speaking the language of their peers and the audience you want, but also have the right mindset and framing of the stories.”

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