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Oluwatosin “Mr Eazi” Ajibade built his name on laid-back hits like Leg Over. The music hasn’t slowed, but behind the scenes he has been building something more complicated: a web of companies and investments that now stretches across at least 18 African countries.
Through his own funds and his investment firm Zagadat Capital, the Nigerian star has backed fintechs, home-services startups, beauty brands, gaming ventures, sports teams and real estate projects, alongside a growing stack of music and entertainment assets.
Below are 20 of the most notable businesses and investments linked to Mr Eazi, based on what’s been disclosed in company filings, interviews and credible media reports.
1. emPawa Africa / emPawa Music
emPawa is the heart of Mr Eazi’s music business – part incubator, part label, part services company. It funds and develops emerging African artists, providing advances, mentorship, marketing and distribution support, and has been described as a new-model “gatekeeper” in the Nigerian and wider African scene.
2. Banku Music
Before emPawa, Mr Eazi built his identity around Banku Music, both as a sound and as a label or imprint. It’s frequently referenced alongside emPawa in his official bios and remains part of the wider brand architecture that anchors his catalogue and touring business.
3. Africa Music Fund (AMF)
In 2020, he unveiled the Africa Music Fund, targeting around $20 million to finance artists across the continent, with advances underwritten by streaming and data analytics. The fund sits at the intersection of venture capital and label economics, effectively turning royalty flows into an investable asset class.
4. Detty Rave and Detty December IP
What started as a December concert in Accra has become a festival and events brand with meaningful IP. Detty Rave, produced under the emPawa umbrella, pulls in fans from the diaspora each year and feeds revenue into the wider group through tickets, sponsorships and hospitality tie-ins. It also anchors the broader “Detty December” narrative around Ghana’s year-end party season.
5. Zagadat Capital
Zagadat Capital is Mr Eazi’s investment firm – a vehicle to back African-founded, category-defining companies. Its portfolio includes emPawa, betPawa, Eden Life, Ruka Hair, PawaPay, Vydia and a growing list of African and global startups. It’s the formal home for his dealmaking, rather than a loose network of side hustles.
6. The Choplife Company
The Choplife banner is a growing group that straddles entertainment, gaming and philanthropy, with Mr Eazi listed as chief executive in various filings and announcements. It hosts lifestyle experiences and provides the brand spine for his move into gaming, betting and hospitality across several African markets.
7. Choplife Gaming
Under that umbrella sits Choplife Gaming, which operates and licenses sports-betting and gaming products across Africa. In recent years, the company has signed multi-year franchise and licensing deals with pawaTech Group to develop the betPawa brand in Nigeria and other markets, with Mr Eazi publicly named as chairman. It’s a strategic push into a tightly regulated, high-margin industry.
8. betPawa
Beyond the franchise partnership, Mr Eazi is an investor and shareholder in betPawa’s parent structure and is often described as the brand’s CEO or operating partner in multiple African countries. The betPawa business links his “chop life” ethos directly to one of the fastest-growing segments of digital entertainment on the continent.
9. PawaPay
Arguably his most important pure-play tech bet is PawaPay, a UK-based mobile-money payments company operating across more than 15 African markets. Mr Eazi is widely cited as a co-founder and investor. The platform has crossed the one-billion-transactions mark and positions itself as a backbone for mobile money across the continent – a critical piece of infrastructure for everything from gaming to e-commerce.
10. Eden Life
Through Zagadat Capital, he has invested in Eeden Life (often stylised Eden Life), a Nigerian startup offering subscription bundles for meals, laundry and cleaning, aimed at urban professionals who outsource domestic work. It’s a classic “busy middle-class” play: recurring revenue, tech-enabled logistics and a push to formalise services that were historically informal.
11. Ruka Hair
Ruka Hair is a UK–Nigeria beauty company focused on textured hair products and extensions that mimic real curl patterns. Zagadat’s portfolio lists Ruka as a core holding, highlighting a consumer-facing bet in a fast-growing, female-led segment. It gives Mr Eazi exposure to the global Afro-textured hair market, which is both highly fragmented and under-served by legacy beauty houses.
12. Paisa
Mr Eazi, via Zagadat, is also an investor in Paisa, a Mexican fintech targeting lending and cross-border financial services. It’s one of the clearest examples of his capital following opportunity outside Africa, into markets with similar financial-inclusion dynamics and a heavy reliance on remittances.
13. Apata
Apata, an Irish fraud-prevention and risk-tech startup, appears in multiple descriptions of Zagadat’s portfolio. The thesis is straightforward: as payment volumes rise in emerging markets and mobile money scales, identity and fraud infrastructure become central. Apata gives him a slice of that picks-and-shovels layer.
14. Shoobs
Event and ticketing platform Shoobs is another entertainment-side investment. Mr Eazi has said publicly that ticketing for his Detty Rave festival was handled by Shoobs “which I am an investor in,” tying his touring brand directly into the company’s growth. It’s a natural synergy play: his shows drive traffic; his equity participates in the upside.
15. Vydia (exited)
Zagadat Capital’s first big exit came via Vydia, a U.S.-based music-distribution and rights-management platform later acquired in a billion-dollar transaction by Larry Jackson’s Gamma. For a while, breathless posts framed this as “Mr Eazi sold his company for $1 billion”, but later reporting clarified that he was an investor rather than a control shareholder. Even so, it’s a landmark exit for his portfolio.
16. Decagon
He is also an investor in Decagon, a Nigerian engineering-talent startup that trains software developers and places them into local and global companies. It complements his bets on PawaPay, Eden Life and other tech firms by feeding the talent pipeline those companies rely on – a human-capital play that sits alongside his artist development work.
17. Cape Town Tigers
Mr Eazi owns shares in Cape Town Tigers, a South African professional basketball club that competes in the Basketball Africa League (BAL). The move ties his brand into the continent’s fast-developing sports and entertainment infrastructure and positions him early in what could become a lucrative African sports ecosystem.
18. ADHI Rwanda
In Rwanda, he has partnered with ADHI, a housing-development company working on affordable and modular housing projects. Coverage around the partnership frames this as part of “expanding his business conglomerate to Rwanda”, with Eazi involved at both board and investor level.
19. Kigali housing estate
Beyond board roles, social and business reports credit him with developing a housing estate in Kigali, positioning him directly in bricks-and-mortar real estate rather than just paper bets. It’s one of the clearest examples of his capital being parked in tangible, income-generating assets rather than purely digital plays.
20. Choplife Limited
Finally, Choplife Limited is cited by emPawa representatives and investors as one of the entities into which Zagadat Capital has invested, alongside emPawa, betPawa, Paisa, Eden Life, Ruka Hair, Decagon, Apata and others. It functions as a corporate shell for the broader Choplife ecosystem – festivals, gaming, hospitality and whatever comes next.
