Frequently asked questions

Reading, accounts, payments, comments and privacy. If your question is not here, the contact page will reach an editor.

Reading and articles

How do I find articles on a subject?: Use search, or browse by section and tag. Search covers the full text of every published piece and, where the retrieval service is available, matches on meaning as well as wording, so a question phrased in your own words will usually find the right article even when it shares none of its vocabulary.
What does premium mean?: A premium piece is available in full to members. Everyone else sees an opening extract. The rest of the article is not sent to your browser at all, so there is nothing hidden in the page to uncover. That is a deliberate change from how this site used to work.
Can I share or republish an article?: Share freely: links, quotations with attribution, and excerpts in the ordinary way. Republishing a piece in full is different and needs our agreement. Any republication must carry full attribution, the original publication date and a link to the canonical version here.
How is reading time calculated?: From the word count of the piece at a fixed reading speed. It is an estimate meant to tell you whether you have time now, not a measurement of you.

Do I need an account to read?: No. Every free article is readable without one. An account lets you bookmark pieces, keep your reading position across devices, comment, and hold a membership.
I did not receive the confirmation email.: Check the spam folder first, since a first message from a new sending domain lands there more often than it should. If it is genuinely absent after a few minutes, request it again from the sign-in page. Repeated failure usually means the address has a typo in it, and we can correct that for you.
How do I reset my password?: Use the reset link on the sign-in page. It sends a single-use link that expires. We never email you a password, and nobody here can read yours: they are stored hashed, which means even we only ever see the scrambled form.

What payment methods do you accept?: Card and mobile money, in Ghana cedis, through Paystack. Mobile money covers MTN, Telecel and AirtelTigo. We do not see or store your card or wallet details at any point.
Why is monthly membership card only?: Because a recurring charge on Ghanaian mobile money is not something the payment rails support. A card can be charged automatically each month; a mobile money wallet cannot. So mobile money is offered on the annual plan, which is a single payment, and we send a reminder before it runs out rather than taking money you did not expect.
Will I get a receipt?: Yes, by email, at the address on your account, for every payment.
Can I get a refund?: If a membership was charged in error or you cancel within fourteen days of a payment without having read a substantial amount of premium work, write to us and we will refund it. Beyond that we consider requests individually rather than applying a rule that ignores the circumstances.

How do comments work?: Comments are open to signed-in readers on most pieces. They are moderated before they appear, and the moderation happens on our servers rather than in your browser, so a comment cannot be published by bypassing the check.
Why was my comment not published?: Most commonly because it targets a person rather than an argument, asserts something as fact that it does not support, or is promotional. We do not remove comments for disagreeing with the piece. If you think a decision was wrong, tell us and an editor will look again.

What data do you collect?: The minimum the site needs to work: your account details, your membership status, what you have bookmarked or read if you are signed in, and aggregate technical data about page loads. We do not build behavioural profiles for advertising, because we do not carry advertising. The privacy page sets out every category and the legal basis for each.
How do I manage cookies?: Through the cookie banner on your first visit, and afterwards from the cookie page. Essential cookies keep you signed in and cannot be switched off without breaking sign-in. Analytics cookies are off until you accept them.

How do I reach the editorial team?: Through the contact page, which sets out what to include for a story tip, a correction, a licensing request or an account question. Every message is read by a person.
How do I pitch a piece?: The write for us page explains what we commission and what a strong pitch contains. In short: state a claim that could be wrong, say what evidence you already hold, and say what is still missing.
Do you hire full time?: Yes, for staff writers, research editors and copy editors, and on a per-piece basis for contributing analysts. The careers page has the detail and describes how the process runs.

Something looks broken.: Tell us through the contact page and include the page address, your browser, and what you saw. A specific report is usually enough for us to reproduce a fault in minutes, and a vague one rarely is.
Do you support screen readers?: Yes. Pages use real headings in order, every image carries alternative text or is marked decorative, and the site is navigable by keyboard. Where we fall short of that we would like to know, because we treat an accessibility failure as a defect rather than as a preference.
Does the site follow my system dark mode?: No, deliberately. Every visitor gets the light theme first, and dark mode is a choice you make here and we remember. A publication that changes appearance based on a setting you forgot you had is harder to trust than one that looks the same every time.