Mr Eazi Launched the Africa Music Fund With 88mph in July 2020, Targeting $20 Million

In July 2020, the Nigerian artist Mr Eazi announced the Africa Music Fund, a vehicle to advance money to African musicians against their future streaming and recording income, with 88mph, a Nairobi-founded seed fund and accelerator, named as its lead investor and a target of $20 million for the initial round. The launch is well documented. What happened to the fund and to 88mph afterward is not: no source found states that the $20 million round closed, and in a May 2022 interview Mr Eazi described 88mph itself as “now defunct,” while separately characterising its money to his other company, emPawa Africa, as a convertible loan rather than an equity stake in anything. Those two facts, an active 2021 investment by 88mph in an unrelated startup and a 2022 statement calling the firm defunct, sit unreconciled in the public record.

What was announced

Music Business Worldwide reported the launch on 21 July 2020, citing a press release: the Africa Music Fund would be “raising $20 million in its initial investment round,” with 88mph joining “as lead investor.” CNN’s coverage two days earlier framed the same figure as a target Mr Eazi was “raising,” not a sum already banked. Mr Eazi told both outlets the fund would let African creatives get paid without taking on debt or giving up ownership, describing the money as “just an advance on their future earnings,” recouped in instalments as an artist’s income came in. Applicants were to distribute through Cinch Distro, a platform built jointly by emPawa Africa and the music-tech company Vydia, with emPawa sourcing and recommending artists for AMF funding.

The structure, on paper, was straightforward: 88mph supplies capital, emPawa supplies artist pipeline and distribution rails, and AMF sits between them as the vehicle that actually advances money to musicians. No party disclosed a legal entity name, jurisdiction of incorporation, or governance structure for AMF itself in any source reviewed for this record.

The part that checks out: the launch, the mechanics, the messenger

Two independent outlets, publishing within days of each other in July 2020, describe the same $20 million target, the same lead investor and the same advance-against-earnings mechanic, with direct quotes from Mr Eazi in both. That level of agreement across independently reported pieces is a reasonable bar for the fact of the announcement itself: AMF was launched, 88mph was named as lead investor, and the model described was advances rather than equity or catalogue acquisition. 88mph’s own investment history is separately verifiable. Founded in 2011 by Kresten Buch, the firm ran three-month accelerator cohorts for early-stage web and mobile startups out of Nairobi, Cape Town and, from 2014, Lagos, and reportedly invested $4 million to $4.5 million across 36 startups between 2011 and 2014. In August 2021, more than a year after the AMF announcement, 88mph co-led a $9 million seed round for the Kenyan payments startup pawaPay alongside Mr Eazi’s own Zagadat Capital, with 88mph founder Kresten Buch serving as pawaPay’s chairman. On the narrow question of whether 88mph was a real, active African investor with a track record before and after 2020, the record is solid.

The part that does not: no confirmed close, and a contradiction about 88mph itself

Nothing found for this record states that the $20 million round closed. The press release language, as quoted by both outlets in July 2020, describes a raise in progress, not a completed one, and no follow-up reporting in the years since revisits the figure, names a second AMF investor, or confirms a final fund size. Neither 88mph’s own website nor emPawa Africa’s current website mentions the Africa Music Fund at all, an absence worth noting for two companies that were, on the 2020 telling, its two central partners.

The more direct problem is 88mph’s own status. In a May 2022 interview, Mr Eazi said emPawa Africa’s early funding came from two places: his own music-career earnings, and “a convertible loan” from “now defunct” 88mph. A convertible loan to emPawa Africa is a different instrument from an equity commitment to a separate fund, AMF, and Mr Eazi’s account does not clearly distinguish the two in that interview. Read narrowly, his words describe money to emPawa, not to AMF. Read alongside the 2020 announcement, in which 88mph’s role was explicitly framed as lead investor in AMF, the two statements are difficult to fully square: either 88mph funded two separate things (a loan to emPawa and a fund commitment to AMF), or the AMF commitment was itself the “convertible loan” Mr Eazi described in 2022, in which case AMF’s founding capital was debt to emPawa rather than equity in a standalone fund, a materially different structure from the one reported in July 2020. No source resolves which reading is correct.

Then there is timing. 88mph is described in some 2015 coverage as having paused new African investment, yet it was named as an AMF lead investor in 2020 and as a co-lead investor in pawaPay’s round in August 2021, before Mr Eazi called it defunct in May 2022. A firm cannot straightforwardly be paused, active as a fund’s lead investor, active again as a fintech co-investor, and defunct, all within roughly seven years, without an intervening event, restructuring or change of control that would explain the shifts. No source reviewed for this record describes any such event. The plainest honest statement is that 88mph’s status across this period is disputed and not fully explained by any single account.

What this means for artists

An artist offered funding through a scheme like AMF should ask a narrow, practical question before signing anything: is the money a loan, an advance recouped from future earnings, or an equity stake, and who exactly is the counterparty on the paper, not just the public face of the announcement. “Advance on future earnings,” the phrase Mr Eazi used to describe AMF in 2020, sounds simple, but the recoupment terms, interest if any, and what happens if projected income does not materialise are the details that matter and that a press release will not contain. Those terms live in a contract, not a quote.

It is also worth an artist’s time to check whether the entity making an offer is still operating in the form advertised. This record found that the investor named as lead backer of a $20 million fund in 2020 was described as defunct by the fund’s own founder less than two years later. That kind of gap between a launch announcement and the later status of the money behind it is exactly the sort of thing a musician, or their lawyer, should verify independently before treating any advance or investment offer as bankable, rather than assuming that press coverage of a launch is itself proof the underlying capital arrived and stayed in place.

Limits of this record

The July 2020 launch is corroborated by two independently published accounts with matching quotes and figures; this record treats the fact of the announcement, and the amount stated as a target, as established on that basis. Whether the $20 million round ever closed, whether AMF has a separate legal existence from emPawa Africa, how many artists it has funded, and what has become of it since 2020 are not established by any source found, and this record does not guess at any of them. 88mph’s precise corporate status as of 2026, including whether it still exists as a registered entity anywhere, was not confirmed independently of Mr Eazi’s 2022 characterisation; 88mph’s own website remains online but contains no operating updates, portfolio changes, or statement on the company’s status that this record could locate. The contradiction between 88mph’s active 2021 fintech investment and its 2022 description as defunct is reported here as a finding, not resolved, because no document available to this desk resolves it.

Correction

Corrected 21 September 2026. The previous headline stated $20 million as the size of the fund. This record’s own sourcing establishes that figure only as the target for an initial investment round announced in a press release, and no source reviewed confirms the round closed at that figure or closed at all. The headline has been narrowed to what the sources support. A fundraising target is not a fund size. No other claim in this record has changed, and the body text, which already described the figure as a target, is unaltered.