Choplife, the entertainment, media, technology, gaming and intellectual property company founded by Nigerian musician Mr Eazi, has moved its operations into Itana, the country’s first digital special economic zone.
The move primarily changes Choplife’s corporate and regulatory base, with the company citing Itana’s regulatory environment and its promise of simpler cross-border operations as key reasons for the decision.
Choplife is the latest company to move into Itana, which now hosts roughly 50 companies since becoming operational in September 2023. The growing interest reflects Itana’s pitch to businesses looking to operate globally from Africa, offering multicurrency accounts, access to international markets and a regulatory framework designed to reduce the friction of running cross-border operations from Nigeria.
“We’re excited to welcome Mr Eazi and the team at Choplife. Their expansion reflects a growing wave of innovative companies choosing to build from Itana for a global audience,” said Chinyere Inya, Itana’s chief executive officer. “At Itana, we’re creating the infrastructure that allows companies like Choplife to scale seamlessly. This milestone reinforces our vision of making it easier than ever to start and grow a business serving Africa from anywhere in the world.”
Mr Eazi, whose real name is Oluwatosin Ajibade, described Itana as the logical step for Choplife, which generates the majority of its content on the continent, even as it is consumed globally. Choplife joins companies such as Reliance Infosystems, Circular Energy, and AI platforms MasteryHive, Udu Technologies and Yamify in Itana.
“When I look at what Itana is building, the founders that are part of Itana and the spirit behind it is, it is an opportunity for us to leverage and centralise our operations,” Ajibade told TechCabal in an interview on Wednesday. “It is very important to us that it is on the continent.”
Navigating a fragmented system
Ajibade traced Choplife’s origins to emPawa Africa, the music company he founded in 2019, and then expanded into events intellectual property (IP) with ‘Detty Rave’ and sports with 1v1 Africa. In 2020, Choplife itself launched as a brand, bringing those ventures together.