IN AMERICA OR Europe, mapping out(规划、梳理) a public company’s ownership structure takes a few clicks on a Bloomberg terminal(彭博终端). In Nigeria, you might need to rely on a website that coughs up(勉强提供) ten-year-old data. Seven hours at an office in Abuja(阿布贾), the capital, could yield a dusty(沾满灰尘的) but more up-to-date document, as might a trip to the stock exchange if the company in question has ever been publicly listed.
在美国或欧洲，梳理一家上市公司的所有权结构只需在彭博终端上点击几下。而在尼日利亚，你可能需要依赖一个提供十年前数据的网站。在首都阿布贾的办公室里花上七个小时，或许能找到一份布满灰尘但更新一些的文件；如果这家公司曾经上市，去一趟证券交易所也可能有所收获。
Few foreigners are willing to do the legwork(跑腿工作), which helps explain why Africa gets around 5% of the world’s foreign direct investment and accounts for less than 1% of the market capitalisation of its listed companies. Stears, a nine-year-old Nigerian company, offers to go the extra mile(加倍努力). At the Nigerian bourse(证券交易所), one of its executives even cosied up to(讨好、套近乎) the stock exchange’s librarian, begging him (in the name of God) to release a USB drive where he was rumoured to store company details as a pastime(消遣、娱乐).
很少有外国人愿意做这种跑腿活儿，这有助于解释为什么非洲只获得全球约5%的外国直接投资，且上市公司市值占比不到1%。Stears，这家成立九年的尼日利亚公司，愿意多走一步。在尼日利亚交易所，公司的一名高管甚至与证券交易所的图书管理员套近乎，以上帝的名义恳求他交出据传他用来自娱存储公司细节的U盘。
The company’s co-founders dreamed up(构想、凭空想出) the idea in the mid-2010s while studying in London.“We saw Bloomberg and thought it was sexy(有吸引力的),” recalls Preston Ideh, the chief executive. They initially copied the American company’s mix of news and data. Yet when subscriber growth turned out to be insufficient to support the media operation, they focused squarely on(完全专注于) financial information.
公司的联合创始人在2010年代中期在伦敦留学时萌生这个想法。“我们看到彭博，觉得它很性感，”首席执行官普雷斯顿·伊德回忆道。他们最初模仿了这家美国公司的新闻和数据混合模式。然而，当订阅用户增长不足以支持媒体运营时，他们便专注于金融信息。