How a weekly PDF became one of Africa's most innovative news products

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/ When Sipho Kings and his co-founder Simon Allison launched The Continent in 2020, they wanted to rethink how journalism is distributed online. Instead of chasing search traffic and social algorithms, they created a weekly PDF newspaper designed specifically for smartphones and distributed it through platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and email. The idea was to bring back the simplicity of a curated newspaper while adapting it to how people actually consume information today. Six years later, The Continent reaches tens of thousands of readers across Africa and around the world. In a recent interview, Kings explained how the publication grew entirely through word of mouth, why its unusual PDF format created a deeper relationship with readers, and how it's building a sustainable media business outside the traditional web ecosystem.