The UK operating company behind Mr Eazi’s emPawa Africa told Companies House for three years that it had three shareholders and 500,000 shares. On 4 April 2026 it registered corrections showing nineteen shareholders and 548,304 shares. The sixteen names that were missing hold, between them, exactly 48,304 shares, which is exactly the number the company allotted on 14 November 2022 in a round it did not report until 25 February 2026. One of the three names that was on the original register, 88mph, held 100,000 shares and transferred the lot on 5 June 2023.
None of that is about songs. It is about who owns the company behind them, which in Afrobeats is almost always the harder question.
What the corrected filings say#
EMPAWA AFRICA MUSIC SERVICES LIMITED is registered in England and Wales, number 12412587, incorporated on 20 January 2020 as empawa africa LIMITED and renamed on 10 November 2021. Its registered office is in Pinner, north west London. Its stated SIC code is 62090, other information technology service activities, which is the code a software business uses, not a record company.
On 6 December 2021 it filed a return of allotment taking it from a nominal two shares to 500,000 ordinary shares of one pound each, allotted on 4 December 2021 at one pound paid. For the next four years, every document the company filed said its share capital was 500,000 pounds.
Then, on 25 February 2026, it filed a second return of allotment: 48,304 new ordinary shares allotted on 14 November 2022, at one pound nominal and 17.76 pounds paid per share, nothing unpaid. Resulting capital, 548,304 shares. The Companies Act gives a company one month to file that form. This one took three years and three months.
Six weeks later, on 4 April 2026, two more documents were registered. Both are RP04 forms, the mechanism for filing a corrected version of something already on the register. One corrects the confirmation statement made on 2 December 2022, the other the statement made on 2 December 2023. Companies House has annotated both originals to say a second filed statement was registered on 4 April 2026, covering shareholder information and, in the 2022 case, the statement of capital too.
Three names became nineteen#
The original confirmation statement for 2 December 2022 listed three shareholders: 88 MPH LIMITED with 100,000 ordinary shares, ALEXBOSH LIMITED with 387,500, and Ikenna Nwagboso with 12,500. That is 500,000, and the statement of capital on the same document agreed.
The corrected version lists nineteen. The original three are still there. Added to them: Africa’s Future Limited 2,500; Azajagotev Limited 2,500; BRUNE HOLDINGS OU 1,341; CARAVELLE INVESTMENT LIMITED 10,000; Daniel Kwame Osafo 2,500; Decimal Point Ventures 2,500; Edgepay Holdings Limited 2,500; ELEVATE PLUS LLC 10,000; EM Fund I, a series of Fund for Africa’s Future 1,821; Flekke Limited 1,814; Fund for Africa’s Future, LP – B4 2,500; LIG Africa Holding Limited 1,500; MBKC Entertainment LLC 1,250; Shekinah Apata LLC – FZ 2,500; Segun Somefun 1,000; and Vauban Nominees Limited 2,078.
Add those sixteen together and you get 48,304. Add them to the original three and you get 548,304. The round filed late and the shareholders left off are the same event seen from two directions: the original confirmation statements simply never recorded the raise.
At 17.76 pounds a share, the arithmetic on the company’s own numbers is that the round brought in 857,879 pounds, that the 500,000 shares already in issue were worth 8,880,000 pounds going in, and that the company was implied at 9,737,879 pounds coming out. It has never published any of those three figures, and this publication is the one doing the multiplication. That the pre-money lands on a round 8,880,000 pounds suggests a deliberately set price rather than a slipped decimal, but that is an observation, not a confirmation.
88mph held a fifth of it, then held none#
The confirmation statement made on 2 December 2023 records the next change in the standard phrasing used for a departing member: 100,000 transferred on 2023-06-05, zero ordinary shares held as at the date of the statement, against the name 88 MPH LIMITED. ALEXBOSH LIMITED appears on the same page at 487,500, up by exactly 100,000, with total capital unchanged.
The document does not name a transferee and is not required to. The arithmetic points one way, and this publication records it as arithmetic, not disclosure.
Size depends on the denominator. Against the 500,000 shares the company was reporting at the time, the departing stake was 20 per cent. Against the corrected 548,304, it was 18.24 per cent. Both figures come from the company’s own filings.
There is a limit on the identification. The register entry is free text with no company number, and that exact name returns one dissolved company incorporated in 2006. The active company associated with Kresten Buch, the Danish founder of the pan-African seed fund that trades as 88mph, is 88MPH LIMITED, number 13001599, spelled without a space; Buch has been a director since 12 March 2021. He was also a director of EMPAWA1 LIMITED, incorporated 10 November 2021 with Mr Eazi as his co-director, on which Buch, not Mr Eazi, was the registered person with significant control at the 75 per cent or more band, and which was dissolved on 4 October 2022. This publication does not state which entity the register refers to.
Mr Eazi has previously characterised 88mph’s money as a convertible loan rather than fund equity. A loan that converts becomes equity, so those accounts need not conflict. The filings add a size and a date: by 2 December 2022 it was 100,000 ordinary shares on the statutory register, and by 5 June 2023 it was gone.
The accounts say something different#
The sharpest contradiction on the file is between the register and the company’s own accounts. Called up share capital is reported as 500,000 pounds in the accounts to 31 January 2022, to 31 January 2023, to 31 January 2024 and to 31 January 2025. The year to 31 January 2023 contains 14 November 2022. The 2025 set was filed on 29 January 2026, less than a month before the return of allotment that restated capital at 548,304. No amended accounts had appeared as at 5 October 2026.
The balance sheet moved in another way worth naming. The accounts to 31 January 2024 introduce a revaluation reserve of 7,717,277 pounds where the prior year had none, turning net liabilities of 137,906 pounds into net assets of 7,502,368 pounds. Behind it is an intangible the accounts call “Intellectual property”, held at a cost of 7,746,273 pounds against accumulated amortisation of 828 pounds. The company’s stated policy for intangibles is cost less amortisation and impairment, and its revaluation policy note is headed as applying to tangible fixed assets, specifically freehold and leasehold properties. The sister company, EMPAWA AFRICA MUSIC PUBLISHING SERVICES LIMITED, number 13875443, shows the same pattern: “Intellectual property” at 2,125,000 pounds with no amortisation at all, and a revaluation reserve of the same amount, on a share capital of 100 pounds. Both take audit exemption and file no profit and loss account. Between them they reported five employees.
What this means for artists#
First, the company that signs you is not the brand you think you are signing to. “emPawa Africa” is a trading identity. The entities on the register are a services company coded as an IT business and a separate publishing company with a 100 pound share capital, each with its own balance sheet. Your counterparty’s solvency, ownership and ability to pay you are properties of that specific company, not of the brand. Ask which numbered entity is on your contract. The answer is a matter of public record.
Second, a share register is not a royalty statement, and investors in a label are not co-owners of your masters. Nothing in these filings transfers a recording, a song, a catalogue or a royalty stream. People who buy shares in a company that owns rights hold an economic interest in that company, which is a different thing from an interest in your copyright. Keep the two apart when you read coverage of label funding rounds.
Third, and least comfortable: the public record can be wrong for years, and the correction can be quiet. Anyone running diligence on this company between 2022 and 2026 would have been told it had three shareholders. The corrected picture only surfaced in 2026, and nothing about it was announced. If you rely on a registry to tell you who you are dealing with, read the filing history for annotations and second filings, not just the current snapshot. The snapshot is what a company last said. The history is what it has said over time, and the gap between them is often the story.
This publication put no questions to emPawa Africa or to Mr Eazi before publication and holds no statement from either. Every figure above is drawn from documents the companies filed themselves.
Sourcing. Downloaded from Companies House and read in full on 5 October 2026: the returns of allotment filed 6 December 2021 and 25 February 2026; the confirmation statements made on 2 December 2021, 2022 and 2023; the two RP04 second filings registered 4 April 2026, scanned paper forms with no text layer, read as rendered page images; the filed accounts for 12412587 for the years ended 31 January 2022 to 2025 and for 13875443 for 2024 and 2025, read in iXBRL form; and the officers, persons with significant control and filing history pages for both companies. Full transaction records: the share transfer of 5 June 2023 and the allotment of 14 November 2022. Of the nineteen names on the corrected register, only Vauban Nominees Limited was matched to a UK company number; ALEXBOSH LIMITED, the largest holder, returns no results on the UK register. Companies House does not check the accuracy of what is filed with it. Corrections to desk@afrobeatswire.com.
