Stears
Nigerian data and market intelligence company for investing in Africa
Wikipedia — Stears (company)Stears is a Nigerian data and intelligence company focused on Africa, with headquarters spanning Lagos, Abuja, and London. Founded in 2017 by Preston Ideh, Abdul Abdulrahim, Foluso Ogunlana, and Michael Famoroti — who met at the London School of Economics and Imperial College in the UK — it began as a financial media publication called Stears Business and has since become an authoritative source on Nigerian data and analysis.
The company has pivoted from consumer-facing media toward organization-focused intelligence solutions, positioning itself as a comprehensive financial database and source of market intelligence for global funds and corporations investing in Africa. It provides financial data and research to support investment decisions, market analysis, and strategic planning.
Its flagship consumer product, Stears Premium, is a subscription insights service covering business, finance, economics, government, and policy in Nigeria through news, opinion, and investigative work. Stears Advisory is its consulting arm taking on custom-intelligence projects, and in 2019 the company developed Nigeria's first real-time election database.
Stears received $600,000 in pre-seed funding from Omidyar Group's Luminate Fund in 2019, and raised $3.3 million in 2022 backed by investors including MaC Venture Capital and Serena Ventures, with plans to enhance data and analytics capabilities, acquire talent, and expand into East and Southern Africa. As a data-driven intelligence business, innovations in financial data and analytics are central to its work.