Earlier today, while commuting via the Nairobi Expressway, by pure blind luck, I happened to notice a billboard for the new Nation App.

This was both surprising and genuinely delightful.

I have always felt that the Nation Media Group (NMG) has been a high-potential but sleeping digital media giant — one whose digital transformation strategies and execution have largely under-performed for well over two decades.

If you know your Internet history in Kenya and East Africa, you will remember that NMG was one of the very first mainstream media houses to go online. Very early. Very visibly.

For a long time, this made the Daily Nation was the de-facto and most authoritative digital news and information platform in Kenya and East Africa. 

However, over the years, it became painfully clear that the organization has struggled to transition its business model to a digital-first, youth-centric audience — not just tactically, but structurally.

A strategic misread that still haunts NMG today

One of the biggest mistakes NMG ever made, in my view, was investing millions of dollars into a new state-of-the-art newspaper printing facility a decade ago at a time when consumer behaviour had already shifted decisively to digital.

Print circulation was already declining.
Consumer attention was already migrating.
Mobile was already becoming the primary screen.

That decision perfectly captured the organization’s deeper challenge:

playing an analogue game while the market had already changed to digital rules.

Post-Covid, we are all digital-first — including Gen X

In more recent years, it has become obvious that Millennials, Gen Z and now Gen Alpha do not experience news through newspapers.

They experience the world through platforms.

Then Covid happened.

At the height of the pandemic, even buying a physical newspaper felt risky.
For many people — including me — that break from print became permanent.

I grew up reading the Daily Nation cover to cover. Classifieds. Obituaries. Everything.

But like many Gen X readers, I never truly went back.

In practice, we are now all digital-first.

Paywalls, upstarts and a lost generation of readers

Another strategic reality NMG created for itself is this: almost all of its digital properties are locked behind paywalls.

That is not inherently wrong.

But it unintentionally created a massive opening for digital-first upstarts such as Tuko, The Kenyan Wall Street and Kenyans.co.ke — all of which are free, mobile-native and deeply embedded in youth consumption behaviour.

The result?

NMG keeps aging with its audience.

It continues to struggle to meaningfully capture the consumer of the future.

The ePaper problem — when print UX is forced into mobile

For many years, NMG has offered an ePaper product.

But the ePaper experience is simply a digital replica of print — essentially a flip-book PDF.

You zoom in.
You pan around.
You fight the layout.

It was never designed for mobile.

It is the clearest signal that the organisation still struggles to truly design for digital consumption rather than digitising print.

Once again, NMG is trying to dance to a digital tune while still playing to an analogue beat.

So… what about the new app?

When I saw the billboard, I was genuinely curious.

I installed the app immediately.

My first impression?

Some decent work has clearly gone into this product.

I launched in guest mode and was greeted by a modern home screen and clear navigation. But within a few interactions, the subscription wall appeared.

Immediate observation

The app gives you very little time to actually experience the product before asking you to pay.

Global best practice across leading digital publishers increasingly favours:

• limited free access,
• trial windows,
• or progressive soft paywalls.

A seven-day trial — or even limited access to selected premium formats — would materially improve the likelihood of conversion.

Right now, the paywall appears too early and too abruptly.

What the app is trying to be — and this is important

The Nation App is not positioned as a newspaper app.

It is positioned as a multimedia platform.

From the screens and flows I reviewed, the app bundles:

• Daily Nation and Business Daily content,
• live TV (NTV),
• live radio (Nation FM),
• video shows,
• podcasts,
• and access to the legacy ePaper product.

Strategically, this is exactly the right direction.

This is how modern digital publishers survive.

However, the discovery experience still feels heavy

Visually, the Watch and Podcast sections are polished and contemporary.

Structurally, however, the experience feels like a catalogue.

You scroll through tiles.
You browse shows.
You browse episodes.

There is very little evidence of:

• behavioural personalization,
• “because you watched…” recommendations,
• or progressive learning by the platform.

Compared to platforms such as the The New York Times, BBC or the The Wall Street Journal, the biggest difference is not content quality.

It is product intelligence.

The Nation App does not yet behave like a learning system.

It behaves like a digital shelf.

The topic-selection screen is genuinely a good product decision

One very positive design decision I noticed in the onboarding and profile flow is the ability to select the content topics and themes that interest you.

This is something I have personally experienced in the New York Times app and it is a critical first step towards meaningful personalization.

Allowing users to explicitly declare interests — business, politics, technology, lifestyle, health and so on — is an important signal of intent.

However, this feature only delivers real value if the platform underneath can act on it.

At the moment, although the Nation App allows you to select interests, there is very little visible evidence that those preferences are actively shaping:

• what appears on your home feed,
• what is prioritized in Watch and Listen,
• or how content is recommended over time.

In other words, the UI is ready for personalization.

The platform architecture underneath does not yet appear to be.

The paywall moment itself is emotionally weak

The subscription screen simply says:

“We heard you — enjoy your reading for less!”

This is transactional language.

It does not explain:

• what you unlock,
• what journalism you are supporting,
• or why this subscription matters.

In Kenya’s price-sensitive market, value storytelling is critical.

At the point of conversion, the app should be reinforcing purpose — not simply listing prices.

The pricing structure is rational — but psychologically under-used

The plans presented are:

• Monthly — KES 900
• Quarterly — KES 2,700
• Annually — KES 10,800

There is no “best value” indicator.
No savings framing.
No behavioral nudges.

This is basic subscription UX that global digital publishers have perfected.

The structure is fine.

The presentation is weak.

The best part of the entire experience: payments

This is where the product genuinely performs well.

The M-Pesa journey is:

• clear,
• properly branded,
• transparent,
• and supported by both STK push and Paybill fallback.

Crucially, the app shows:

• the business number,
• the reference account,
• and step-by-step instructions.

From a Kenyan fintech UX perspective, this builds trust.

The confirmation screen is clean and reassuring.

But, there is a serious post-payment experience gap

After payment, the app simply says:

“You’re all set — Continue reading.”

There is no premium onboarding.

No recommended starting points.

No continuation of the article or show that triggered the paywall.

This is one of the most valuable emotional moments in the entire user lifecycle — and it is currently wasted.

My payment actually failed — until I told the app I had paid

After completing payment, the app did not immediately recognize the transaction.

I had to manually press a button confirming that I had paid before access was enabled.

That is unnecessary friction in what should be the smoothest part of the journey.

Podcasts: a strategic distribution mistake

The podcasts play well inside the app.

But NMG still does not distribute its podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube.

This is a major strategic limitation.

Global media houses distribute everywhere.

The logic is simple: fish where the fish are.

Distribution is no longer the enemy.

It is the growth engine.

Keeping podcasts locked inside owned platforms limits discovery, reach and engagement.

As a blogger myself, with a long-running blog at www.moseskemibaro.com, I learned this lesson years ago.

LinkedIn and Medium now amplify my content far more effectively than my owned platform alone.

That is not a weakness.

It is a distribution strategy.

A deeper product problem: NMG clearly does not operate a unified DXP

It is important to clarify what I mean when I say that NMG does not appear to be running a proper Digital Experience Platform (DXP).

A DXP is not simply a Content Management System (CMS.

A modern DXP is the backbone that orchestrates:

• content,
• identity,
• subscriptions,
• personalization,
• analytics,
• and customer journeys

across all digital touchpoints — mobile apps, websites, audio, video and emerging channels.

In practice, a DXP enables an organisation to operate from:

one content engine,
one customer profile,
one identity system,
and one subscription layer.

That foundation allows:

• one login to work everywhere,
• one subscription to unlock content across devices and formats,
• unified entitlements,
• consistent pricing logic,
• and intelligent personalization.

This is how global digital media publishers deliver seamless cross-platform experiences.

In the Nation ecosystem today, the product signals strongly suggest that:

• the mobile app,
• the websites,
• and the ePaper product

are still powered by separate back-end systems.

This fragmentation is not merely inconvenient.

It fundamentally limits what NMG can do with:

• audience data,
• segmentation,
• retention,
• and product innovation.

In a nutshell, without a unified DXP, NMG and its digital offerings cannot truly behave like a modern unified digital platform — regardless of how good the interface becomes.

The pricing inconsistencies reveal this structural fragmentation

Some examples are extremely difficult to justify from a consumer point of view:

• Business Daily on the web costs about KES 1,600 per month.
• Business Daily ePaper costs about KES 1,540 per month.
• The Nation App subscription costs KES 900 per month and appears to bundle multiple brands.

This makes little sense to users.

But from a platform strategy perspective, it is a clear signal of disconnected systems.

Leading global publishers operate one identity, one subscription engine and one content backbone.

That is what enables seamless access across mobile, web, audio and video.

Why is the ePaper still inside the new app?

Another confusing design decision is the presence of the legacy ePaper tab inside an otherwise modern mobile experience.

Rather than collapsing that content into mobile-first article and story formats, the app simply links to the old product.

This weakens the digital-first positioning of the new platform.

One app or many apps?

It is not obvious whether NMG should:

• bundle everything into one super-app, or
• run separate apps for flagship brands.

Interestingly, global publishers increasingly operate hybrid strategies.

Some bundle.

Some separate.

But in all cases, what unifies the experience is a shared platform underneath.

That foundation is what NMG still appears to be missing.

Final reflections

The new Nation App is a positive signal.

It shows that NMG is finally treating digital as more than a support channel.

The content breadth is impressive.

The payment experience is strong.

The interface is modern.

But the organization’s real problem is not UI.

It is architecture.

Until NMG invests in:

• a unified Digital Experience Platform,
• a single identity and subscription layer,
• intelligent personalization,
• and modern distribution thinking,

it will continue to fight the digital media battle with fragmented systems and legacy assumptions.

The app is not the digital transformation.

It is merely the interface.