African venture capital (VC) has no shortage of ambition, but it still lacks the elements that convince global capital: verifiable liquidity and capital return potential, according to Stears, a financial data provider that enables private capital investors to make better investment decisions in Africa. Investors, analysts, and founders have long operated with limited insight into the reality of exits, liquidity momentum, and the depth of markets that can return capital.
At the Africa Prosperity Summit held from November 12 to 14, Stears launched the Stears-VP Liquidity Index (SVL Index), a decade-long dataset tracking exits and liquidity events across African private markets. Developed in partnership with Ventures Platform and other African General Partners (GPs), the Index addresses the data gap that has limited transparency and efficiency in African private markets and pitched a continent’s standardised metric benchmark for tracking liquidity conditions in private markets to gauge African venture maturity.
The Index aggregates ten years of exit records and liquidity events and supplements them with confidential submissions from African GPs, with Stears acting as custodian of all deal-level data. Updated year-round and publicly accessible, it provides quarterly and annual indicators, as well as sector and regional breakdowns that offer a granular picture of how liquidity flows across the ecosystem.
Stears CEO Preston Ideh described the Index as part of the market infrastructure Africa has lacked—trusted, standardised data of the kind global investors expect. He said the index “creates a single way to track African GP performance, access previously undisclosed data, and tell a more accurate story of how African VC has grown over the years.”
According to Stears, between 2022 and 2023, African venture liquidity fell sharply under rising interest rates, valuation resets, and a global tech downturn. During this period, Limited Partners (LP) grew increasingly skeptical about returns, while African GPs found themselves defending returns they could not consistently demonstrate. The ecosystem needed stronger evidence for liquidity and return potential.
The Index offers the insights. It shows that although liquidity is recovering, the overall SVL Index rose from 113.27 at the end of 2024 to 130.28 in Q3 2025, indicating rising exit activity and improved buyer appetite. A similar uptick is visible in venture liquidity, which dropped to 96.42 during the downturn, but rebounded to 116.34.
The statement highlights that GPs frequently argue that raising institutional capital is difficult, but for LPs argument has always been exits, timing, and recoverable value. Without standardized liquidity benchmarks, LPs have struggled to compare African fund performance or assess ecosystem maturity.
Ventures Platform’s Managing Partner, Dotun Olowoporoku, said the Index is a foundational element of the information architecture African VC needs that helps investors model liquidity cycles.
“The SVL Index enables GPs and LPs to plan with confidence, model liquidity more accurately, and ultimately build repeatable pathways to strong returns,” he said.
With its uniform benchmark for GP performance and liquidity depth, the SVL Index promises to give LPs firmer ground to compare fund managers, allocate capital more confidently, and challenge inflated narratives with data.
Stears said the Index will also power the upcoming 2025 VC Liquidity Report, produced with Nomad Capital Advisory and Kara Ventures. The report will analyse liquidity constraints, exit pathways, and the pace of recovery across Africa’s major venture markets.
