Mr Eazi Wants To List His Company On The Nigerian Exchange
The musician and emPawa Africa founder is exploring an NGX listing, saying he wants Nigerians to own a piece of the business. He cites Aliko Dangote as the model.
Mr Eazi, the musician turned entrepreneur whose legal name is Oluwatosin Oluwole Ajibade, is exploring a listing on the Nigerian Exchange, saying he wants Nigerians to be able to own part of his technology business.
He has cited business leaders including Aliko Dangote as his inspiration for taking the capital markets route.
Why this is unusual
Nigerian entertainers have built businesses before. Very few have taken them to public markets, and almost none have framed a listing as an act of national ownership rather than a fundraising exercise.
The conventional path for a successful Nigerian creative-sector founder is private capital, usually from international venture funds, followed either by an acquisition or by an eventual listing on a foreign exchange. The domestic market has rarely been considered.
What emPawa is
A talent incubator backing emerging African artists. The model provides funding, distribution and infrastructure to musicians early in their careers in exchange for a share of the upside, addressing precisely the gap that has historically forced African artists into unfavourable deals with foreign labels.
It is, in other words, a business built around the structural weakness this publication keeps writing about: African music generating enormous global value and capturing very little of it domestically.
The listing question
A creative-sector technology company on the NGX would be a genuinely new kind of instrument for Nigerian investors, who have limited domestic exposure to the creative economy despite it being one of the country's most globally successful sectors.
It would also face real scrutiny. Talent businesses are difficult to value: revenue is lumpy, dependent on a small number of breakout acts, and the underlying assets are people who can leave.
The timing is notable too. The exchange is running hot, with market capitalisation up more than 430 per cent in three years and a major Dangote listing targeted for October.
Sources: Nairametrics, 19 August 2026.
There is a repeating and depressing pattern in Nigeria's creative sector. A founder builds something valuable on the back of Nigerian talent and Nigerian audiences. International capital funds the growth. The eventual exit is an acquisition by a foreign company or a listing on a foreign exchange.
The value created by Nigerian culture ends up owned by people who are not Nigerian, and the returns leave.
That is not anybody's villainy. It is what happens when domestic capital markets are shallow and international money is available. Founders take the money that is offered.
Which is why a domestic listing matters beyond the specific company. Every creative business that lists on the NGX rather than exiting abroad keeps the ownership, the returns and the governance relationship inside the country. It also gives Nigerian pension funds and retail investors exposure to the one sector where the country genuinely leads the world.
If Nigeria wants to capture the value of Afrobeats rather than merely producing it, this is closer to the answer than any amount of cultural policy.
