Oluwatosin Ajibade, the Nigerian musician and entrepreneur better known as Mr Eazi, is moving more of his business operations to Nigeria as he builds across technology, payments, gaming, entertainment and intellectual property.
His Choplife group has moved into Itana, the digital special economic zone in Lagos. More than 21 engineers now work from Nigeria. And if the businesses reach sufficient scale, Ajibade wants Nigerians to be able to own part of that value through the Nigerian Exchange.
“We’re now back home,” he told Nairametrics in an interview.
That comment captures much of what Mr Eazi is trying to do next.
He has spent years building and investing across African markets. His commercial interests now go well beyond music, where he first became widely known. Through Choplife and other investments, he has exposure to gaming, payments, events, sports, technology and intellectual property.
Mr Eazi wants the technology built in Africa, the engineers based here, the corporate structure closer to the markets being served and, eventually, part of the ownership available to African investors.
Bringing Choplife to Nigeria
Choplife’s move into Itana is central to that decision.
Itana was created as a digital special economic zone for technology companies that want a Nigerian base while addressing some of the corporate, banking, tax and regulatory problems that have encouraged African startups to establish holding companies abroad.
Many African technology companies have traditionally incorporated parent entities in places such as Delaware or the United Kingdom. International investors are familiar with those jurisdictions and often regard their legal and corporate frameworks as easier to work with.
But Mr Eazi questions the assumption that moving a company outside Africa automatically removes risk.
Founders are regularly warned about “Nigeria risk” or “Africa risk”, he said, even though companies operating in developed markets also deal with political, regulatory and commercial uncertainty.
His move into Itana is therefore less about sentiment than structure.
Choplife needs a base from which it can manage capital, technology and businesses operating across several African countries without automatically locating the centre of the company outside the continent.
Mr Eazi said most of what his businesses create originates in Africa, even when the eventual consumer is elsewhere.
If the products, people and intellectual property are already coming from the continent, he sees a case for keeping more of the corporate infrastructure here too.
Technology connects the businesses
Music remains the activity most closely associated with Mr Eazi, but it is now only one part of his commercial interests.
His businesses include music and artist development through emPawa Africa, events such as Detty Rave, gaming through brands including betPawa and Chopwin, and sports through 1v1 Africa. He is also an investor and board member at pan-African payments company pawaPay.
Technology connects much of that activity.
Mr Eazi describes technology and intellectual property as the “new brick and mortar”.
The comparison helps explain how he sees the businesses he is building.
An earlier generation of Nigerian entrepreneurs created value through factories, banks, power companies and other physical assets. Mr Eazi believes software, payment infrastructure and intellectual property can become equally important commercial assets for a new generation of African companies.
The next large African company may not need to own cement plants or oil fields. It may own payment rails, software, distribution networks, gaming platforms or intellectual property used by millions of people.
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The engineers
He said more than 21 engineers are already working from Nigeria on technology used across his businesses.
That number may appear small beside the scale of his wider commercial ambitions, but the principle is important.
Nigeria’s technology sector is usually discussed through founders, fundraising rounds and valuations. The engineers building the products receive far less attention.
Mr Eazi believes Nigeria has already demonstrated that it can produce world-class technical talent. He pointed to technology entrepreneurs such as Iyin Aboyeji, Flutterwave founder Olugbenga Agboola and Paystack co-founder Shola Akinlade while making that case.
For his businesses, keeping engineering work in Nigeria deepens their local economic footprint.
A technology company can make significant revenue from Nigerian customers while keeping its corporate structure, intellectual property and much of its technical workforce abroad.
A company that develops its products locally creates more than consumer activity. It creates jobs, technical capacity and intellectual property.
Ajibade said he wants to build a company that is “truly African from top to bottom” while meeting international standards.
Doing that, however, exposes another problem.
Africa is still difficult to scale across
Mr Eazi used Nigeria and Benin Republic to illustrate how difficult it remains to operate across African markets.
The two countries share a border, but a technology company moving from one into the other can still face an entirely separate licensing and regulatory process.
“There is really no single market,” he said.
That is one of the most important points in the interview.
African businesses do not struggle only because of limited access to capital. They also struggle with fragmented regulation.
A company expanding across the continent may have to deal with different central banks, tax authorities, telecom regulators, currencies, foreign-exchange systems and licensing regimes.
For a digital company, the product may cross a border instantly. Regulatory approval may take months.
Mr Eazi said those delays can become so long that a company loses the opportunity it intended to pursue.
He wants greater regulatory cooperation between African countries, including systems that allow licences obtained in one market to receive some recognition in another.
The commercial argument is that reducing duplication would lower the cost of expansion and make it easier for African companies to reach regional scale.
His experience with PawaPay brings the problem into sharper focus.
The payments company connects businesses to mobile-money infrastructure across multiple African markets. Part of its value comes from reducing the complexity companies face when they need to transact across different payment systems.
He is arguing that regulators can remove some of the same friction at the government level.
Operating has changed his view of startups
Mr Eazi’s involvement with technology companies has also changed the type of businesses that interest him.
He said he is increasingly drawn to founders who are “not obsessed with vanity metrics”.
That observation comes after a period in which African startups were often judged heavily by capital raised, customer growth, transaction volumes and private-market valuations.
Those figures can indicate momentum. They do not always reveal whether a company has a sound business underneath them.
Operating companies bring different questions.
Does the product solve a problem customers will pay to fix? Can the company manage its costs? Can it expand without repeatedly destroying capital? Can it survive difficult regulatory and economic conditions?
Those questions are important to Mr Eazi because he eventually wants one of his technology businesses to face public investors.
The NGX ambition
He would like to list a technology company on the Nigerian Exchange.
“It will be a pleasure to list a technology company on the NGX,” he said.
However, there is no IPO in progress.
He did not identify the company, give a timetable or disclose a valuation. He described the idea as something he wants to work towards.
Its significance lies in the ownership question.
He said he has watched Nigerian entrepreneurs such as Aliko Dangote, Abdul Samad Rabiu and Femi Otedola build large companies and allow Nigerians to own shares in them through the public market.
He wants technology entrepreneurs to consider the same route.
Nigeria has produced some of Africa’s most valuable privately held technology companies. Yet ordinary Nigerian investors have little direct access to them.
Nigerians may use their products, work for them or help generate the transactions that make them valuable, but they generally cannot buy shares in those companies through a local brokerage account.
A successful local technology listing would begin to change that.
It would give pension funds, asset managers and individual investors access to a type of company that remains poorly represented on the Nigerian Exchange.
For the NGX, that matters too.
Nigeria’s listed market still offers far greater exposure to banking, telecommunications, consumer goods and industrial companies than to home-grown technology businesses.
A sizeable technology listing would broaden the market and give investors another way to participate in Nigeria’s digital economy.
