Communiqué 48: Stears’ pivot left a massive gap in Africa’s new media. Who can fill it?
Stears’ shift to focus on its enterprise business has left the market craving expert-led economic and political analysis.
1. Pivots and twilight
In February 2023, Nigeria headed to the polls for the sixth time since the country’s return to democratic governance. But unlike the previous five elections, this one had an extra layer of complexity. For the first time in Nigerian history, there was a credible third contender, the usual two-legged race was now three-legged. As uncertainty mounted in the days leading up to the elections, Stears, a pan-African data company, released its predictions based on an opinion poll conducted on over 6,000 Nigerians.
A few weeks after the elections had come and gone, not only did Stears accurately predict the outcome of the polls, but its digital election tracker had been one of the primary reference points for thousands of voters. The platform saw a 5,000% increase in user visits than estimated. It was a win for Stears’ consumer-facing division, but it was also its last dance.
Aside from the election tracker, this division also produced a COVID-19 live monitor during the pandemic, but its most popular product by far was Stears Premium, its subscription insights product containing a range of content, from news and analysis to opinion pieces and investigative deep dives on issues around the economy, tech, business, and government policy.
As Nigerians prepared for a new government, Stears was winding down its consumer-facing division and redirecting most of its editorial resources to its enterprise business.
2. Step back
Founded in 2017 by Preston Ideh and a group of his friends from the London School of Economics and Oxford, Stears was initially conceived as a solution to Africa's data and intelligence gaps. Its first iteration was as a free-to-read publication but its core mission was to build a data and intelligence company akin to Bloomberg, focused on providing critical insights about Nigeria and the broader African economy. For a time, the company pursued both missions simultaneously.
Stears did not operate like your typical media business, it never accepted any advertisement. The first edition of Communiqué explained the rationale behind this:
“By choosing not to move with the status quo and play the traditional game of reach and quantity, Stears avoids fighting in a crowded arena. However, it also deprives itself of the media industry’s biggest revenue source, advertising. In Nigeria, advertisers are attracted to page views, and page views are stimulated not only by content quality but by quantity. To make up for this, Stears is challenging on another similarly competitive stage, but one with potentially higher returns — research and data analysis. Stears’ competitors are no longer just the digital publishers we have spent the last few minutes talking about, now it must fight with the likes of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), McKinsey, KPMG, Accenture, Bloomberg.”
Stears envisioned its publication as a content marketing vehicle for its data business. In July 2020, it moved its content behind a paywall, but through clients like Citibank, Sterling Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), its enterprise business was generating 75% of company revenue. This was not unusual, the media business of Bloomberg, which Stears is closely modeled after, remains unprofitable, and FT Professional, the Financial Times’ B2B offering, accounts for 75% of the publication’s paying readership. However, these companies still retained a dual presence serving both their corporate and individual customers. Why couldn't Stears do likewise?
For Ideh, it was a matter of focus. The core mission of the company remains to build a data and intelligence company, and while its media business had helped drive that goal, it took too many resources and now seemed to be hampering the company’s mission.
“It takes a lot of resources and expertise to be able to build a data business,” Ideh told Communiqué. “We did build some other smaller data products, but we just didn’t dedicate all of our resources and all of our attention to whatever data product we were working on. And as long as you have one part of the business that is dominant, which is the B2C side that has a lot of distribution, that has a product that people love, people would always associate the entire business with that product. And it makes it harder for any other new product to come up.”
So, it came down to the simple opportunity cost: for Stears’ enterprise data business to thrive, it had to forego its consumer-facing media business.
3. Some big boots to fill
Stears’ pivot to focus on its enterprise business effectively restricted the flow of high-quality data and critical analysis about Nigeria and Africa at large to consumers. In recent years, it has become clear how important this information is, and different companies have taken varied approaches to providing it.
In September, Archivi.ng, a non-profit attempting to digitize Nigerian history by scanning old newspapers, hired former Pulse Nigeria editor-in-chief, Samson Toromade to launch The Archivist. The Archivist would use its treasure trove of historical data to provide insights on contemporary issues. For example, one of its stories used the list of top secondary school students from 2009 to help explain brain drain in present times. In a way, Archivi.ng was adopting the Stears playbook of using a publication as a content marketing tool for its core product. Other media outfits like Dataphyte, founded by Premium Times alum Joshua Olufemi, provide a similar analytical offering, but no one does it quite as well as Stears did.
In filling the gap that the Stears pivot left, contenders would have to consider the characteristics that made Stears as successful.
One of the defining qualities behind Stears’ success was its commitment to subject-matter expertise. Unlike traditional media companies, Stears employed professional economists rather than journalists as its primary writers (props if you finished from LSE, the founder’s alma mater). This approach gave the company a critical advantage: the ability to not only gather data but also interpret and contextualize it at a high level. In a market like Africa, where data is often fragmented, outdated, or poorly digitized, this distinction gave Stears a competitive edge that any contender to replace it would need to have.
Economists brought a deep understanding of macroeconomic principles, market dynamics, and policy implications, enabling Stears to produce insights that resonated with decision-makers. This approach meant Stears was not merely reporting events but explaining their causes and predicting their outcomes, a value proposition highly prized by its enterprise clients.
The credibility theory of communication supports Stears’ approach, and it states that the impact of a message can be influenced by the perceived competence or credibility of the source. And this credibility can be ascertained based on characteristics like expertise and trustworthiness. In employing economists, as opposed to journalists who lack expertise in complex areas like finance and may misinterpret data or miss critical nuances, Stears elevated the quality of insights it put out and its credibility among its target audience of professionals, investors, and policymakers. Readers trusted Stears not just to report facts but to provide actionable insights grounded in expertise.
Another critical factor behind Stears’ success was its carefully aligned business model. By prioritizing a subscription-based approach, the company established a funding mechanism that directly supported its mission of delivering high-quality insights. Unlike many media companies that rely heavily on advertising revenue, Stears avoided the pitfalls of ad-supported journalism, which can compromise editorial independence and depth of reporting.
The subscription model allowed Stears to focus entirely on serving its readers rather than pandering to advertisers or chasing page views. This alignment between its business strategy and editorial priorities was important as paying subscribers, particularly professionals and institutions, expected and valued deep, data-driven analysis rather than sensationalism or surface-level coverage. In turn, this demand incentivized Stears’ writers to focus on quality and rigor.
4. A question of worth and incentives
However, as Stears has shifted focus, very little of what it used to do exists in the market anymore. But whether or not anyone can or will fill the gap is a question of worth and incentives.
One, is the gap even worth filling? That is, is there a sustainable business model for investing that much expertise and professional experience in economic analysis? Yes, Africa Confidential is proof that there is. The insights just have to be world-changing and deep enough to bear consequences. Therein lies the hard work.
Two, are there enough incentives for someone to fill this gap? Again, yes. The most obvious is the near-immediate high-value brand differentiation that comes with a job well done. Next, it provides access to a niche but rich audience. Lastly, it ensures a moat that makes it difficult for anyone else to compete, as Stears showed.
However, the caveats are just as strong.
The cost of replicating Stears’ success at scale is almost too steep for a new upstart. There is a growing market for credible and actionable insights about Africa, especially among investors and policymakers navigating complex markets. This audience values substance over sensationalism and is willing to pay top dollar for it. But, the hurdles are significant. Building credibility requires substantial upfront investment in talent and infrastructure. Without a robust secondary revenue source or significant initial backing, sustaining such a venture will be difficult. It then follows that it is a media business that has already found success with one product that will be in pole position to replace Stears.
Which platform currently existing has the vision or drive for this? Because the incentives are clear, but the risks are just as lucid.