Mr Eazi’s Choplife moves operations to Itana

Mr Eazi’s Choplife has moved its operations into Itana, Nigeria’s digital special economic zone, giving the company a central base as it continues to do business across Africa. Choplife was founded by Nigerian musician Oluwatosin Ajibade, better known as Mr Eazi. What started around music has grown into a business covering entertainment, media, technology, gaming and intellectual property. The company has interests in music, film, sports and events and operates across several African countries. The move to Itana is less about relocating staff and more about where Choplife handles its corporate affairs. For a company operating across different markets, that matters because every country comes with its own rules for registration, banking, foreign exchange and licensing.

The headache of doing business around Africa

Choplife operates in Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Mali and Liberia. Ajibade said one of the problems with expanding across these markets is having to repeat similar processes in each country. “If I want to do my tech business in both countries, it’s an entirely different process, and I have to do it every time,” he told TechCabal. That can become expensive and, more importantly, slow. Ajibade said businesses can end up missing opportunities because getting set up in another country takes too long. “Sometimes you’re not able to take advantage of an opportunity because by that time, maybe it takes two years, the opportunity you saw is gone,” he said. This is the main reason Choplife is interested in Itana. Instead of building its corporate setup from scratch in every market, the company wants to keep more of its operations under one base while continuing to work across the continent.

What Choplife gets from Itana

Itana is designed for companies that want to operate internationally from Nigeria. Businesses in the zone can access multicurrency accounts, receive and hold foreign currency and move capital across borders. The zone also has tax incentives and exemptions for qualifying companies. For Choplife, these services are relevant because its business does not stop at Nigeria’s borders. The company has already started operating from Itana, with engineers working from Nigeria. Ajibade also said Choplife is considering a physical workspace at the development. But there is another reason the move matters to him. Ajibade wants Choplife to remain an African company as it grows. “The ethos is to build an African company,” he said. His point is that the company should be African in its structure and operations while still being able to compete for business outside the continent.

Choplife is not a typical Itana startup

Most of the companies associated with digital free zones tend to be technology businesses. Choplife is different. Its main business is built around entertainment and intellectual property, with music, events, sports, film and gaming forming part of its portfolio. That puts the company closer to Nigeria’s creative economy, where businesses can have customers, audiences and commercial partners in several countries at the same time. Itana CEO Chinyere Inya said this is an area the zone wants to support. For creative businesses, she said, incorporation is only one part of the problem. They also need a place where they can deal with the banking and other corporate requirements that come after registration. Itana became operational in September 2023 and now has about 50 companies operating within the zone.

It is also developing a physical district in Alaro City, along Lagos State’s Lekki Free Zone corridor. Nigeria’s creative sector contributes about 2.3% to the country’s GDP, according to the Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musa Musawa. The government expects the sector to create another 2 million jobs by 2030. For Itana, Choplife provides a chance to show that its model can work for more than software companies. For Choplife, the calculation is simpler. It already operates across a long list of African markets, and having one place to manage more of the business could make expansion less cumbersome.