Between 17 October 2020 and 23 November 2021, a run of Nandy releases carried a phonogram credit that named the Tanzanian singer herself as the owner of the recordings, and named emPawa Africa Limited as nothing more than her exclusive licensee. The string reads, verbatim: “℗ 2020 Nandy Under Exclusive License to emPawa Africa Limited”.
That sentence describes a licence, not a sale. The master stayed with the artist. What emPawa took was the exclusive right to exploit it for a period. Then, from 22 October 2021, the same catalogue started carrying a different credit: “℗ 2021 emPawa Africa Limited”, with no reference to Nandy at all.
What the credit actually says#
Seven Apple Music collections for Nandy carry the full licence string. Six have release dates inside a thirteen month window: Do Me featuring Billnass on 17 October 2020, Nibakishie featuring Alikiba on 16 November 2020, Number One with Joeboy on 8 January 2021, Leo Leo featuring Koffi Olomide on 11 February 2021, the Taste EP on 18 June 2021, and Party on 23 November 2021. A seventh, a re-delivery of her 2017 single One Day, carries the phonogram year 2017 while naming the same licensee.
A second set of seven collections carries the shorter credit, with the artist’s name removed: Kunjani with Sho Madjozi on 22 October 2021, Kufuli on 6 November 2021, Siwezi on 23 March 2022, the Siwezi choir version on 18 May 2022, Napona on 8 July 2022, the Maturity EP on 5 August 2022, and Mchumba on 20 October 2022. Mchumba is the last Nandy release to name emPawa in any form.
The two forms overlap, which matters. Kunjani, credited to emPawa alone, came out a month before Party, which still credited Nandy as owner. This was not a clean contractual switch on a single date. It looks more like two delivery batches prepared at different times, a caution against reading any single credit as a precise legal timestamp.
The credit is corroborated across two independent services. Deezer’s label field carries the identical string on Do Me and the Taste EP, and the identical shortened form on Siwezi and the Maturity EP. That is worth spelling out, because Deezer’s label field normally collapses an exclusive licence down to the licensee’s name and drops the true owner. Here it did not. Deezer is used only as a cross-check, never as the ownership source.
The company on the credit line stopped existing under that name#
There is a UK company that was called emPawa Africa Limited. It is company number 12412587, incorporated on 20 January 2020. Its registered office is at Wisteria Grange Barn, Pikes End, Pinner.
It is not called that any more. The Companies House record carries a previous name entry showing EMPAWA AFRICA LIMITED ran from 20 January 2020 to 10 November 2021, and the filing history contains a change of name resolution dated 10 November 2021 with the certificate issued the same day. From that date the company has been EMPAWA AFRICA MUSIC SERVICES LIMITED. It remains active.
Line that up against the credits. The name emPawa Africa Limited existed for twenty-two months, and the Nandy licence credits fall squarely inside that window. But the credits kept using the retired name for almost a year afterwards. Party, released 23 November 2021, names a company name that had ceased to exist thirteen days earlier. Mchumba, in October 2022, still names it. Phonogram credits are delivered once and rarely revisited, so the catalogue preserves a corporate name the register had already moved on from.
One more detail from the register is hard to ignore. Company 12412587, the entity named on Nandy’s masters, carries SIC code 62090, “Other information technology service activities”. It does not carry a music industry code at all. A second company, EMPAWA AFRICA MUSIC PUBLISHING SERVICES LIMITED, number 13875443, was incorporated on 27 January 2022, eleven weeks after the rename, and that one carries SIC 59200, “Sound recording and music publishing activities”. The group appears to have split recorded music services from publishing services across the turn of 2021 into 2022, in the same months the Nandy credit was changing shape.
Who controls the licensee#
The people filings are unambiguous. Oluwatosin Oluwole Ajibade, a Nigerian national, was appointed a director of 12412587 on 20 January 2020, the day it was incorporated, and is recorded as the sole active person with significant control. His nature of control is listed as ownership of shares of 75% or more, ownership of voting rights of 75% or more, and the right to appoint or remove directors. He is also a director of the publishing company, 13875443.
Yasmin Baba, a British national, was appointed a director of the recordings company on 27 October 2021, two weeks before the rename, and is also a director of the publishing company. A third director, Temiloluwa Elizabeth Otedola, was appointed on 23 February 2020 and resigned on 20 March 2020. So the counterparty to Nandy’s licence was a UK private company under the three quarters plus control of a single individual, not a subsidiary of a major.
The registries disagree with each other#
MusicBrainz holds emPawa Africa Limited and emPawa Africa Music Services Limited as two separate labels, and records emPawa Africa Limited as Nigerian, with a life span beginning in 2018. Companies House records one UK company that changed its name. Both cannot be right. Either there is a separate Nigerian entity of that name that the UK register would not show, or the rights registry has split one company into two label records and attached the wrong country to one. From the sources reachable here that cannot be resolved, and it is a live risk for anyone working out who to send a royalty statement to.
There is a sharper contradiction at recording level. Nandy’s 2017 single One Day exists on Apple as three separate collections. One carries “℗ 2017 Nandy Under Exclusive License to emPawa Africa Limited”. The other two both carry “℗ 2021 Tanzania House of Talent THT”. Two different entities are claiming the phonogram in the same 2017 recording, and both claims are live and on sale.
The same pattern repeats on Raha, released 2 June 2023, which exists as one collection credited “℗ 2023 Waka Music Limited” and another credited “℗ 2023 FAUSTINA CHARLES MFINANGA AKA NANDY”, the artist’s legal name. On that track the artist and a label are each asserting ownership of the same recording on the same platform.
Where the catalogue went afterwards#
After Mchumba in October 2022, emPawa disappears from Nandy’s credits. What replaces it is not one successor but two running in parallel. Waka Music Limited appears as phonogram owner continuously from 2016 through to 2025, including across the entire emPawa period, on titles such as Dah!, Totorimi and Sugar. Ziiki Media appears from 2018 and becomes dominant from 2024 onward, carrying Wahala, Tonge Nyama, Sweety with Jux, Asante and Oya in November 2026.
Notably, ROCKSTAR4000 Music Entertainment, the imprint associated with Nandy’s own operation, does not appear as the named phonogram owner on a single release found in this check.
What could not be established#
No consideration of any kind is disclosed in any document reached. There is no advance figure, no royalty split and no equity. Any number attached to this arrangement would be invented, so none is published here.
The term and territory of the licence are not stated on the credit and were not found in any filing. Whether it expired, was terminated, or simply was not renewed could not be established. Whether the emPawa publishing company ever administered Nandy’s songwriting, as opposed to her recordings, could not be established either, and the two are different relationships.
Waka Music Limited and Ziiki Media have no UK registration under those names, and Tanzania has no public company register that can be queried. Searches of the SEC full text system returned no filings mentioning emPawa. The Internet Archive was offline during this work, so the delivery chronology of individual releases could not be pinned down with snapshot evidence. emPawa’s own site sets out its model, saying it partners with independent African artists and labels on distribution and publishing and telling artists “You own your own”, which is consistent with a licence structure, but it publishes no release or statement naming Nandy.
What this means for artists#
The useful thing here is that the licence boundary is visible at all. Most artists never find out what their own metadata says about them. Nandy’s does something unusual: it names her, personally, as the owner of the recording and relegates a well funded label services company to the role of licensee. If you are negotiating, that string is the outcome to aim for, and it is checkable from the outside.
Three practical lessons follow. First, the shortening of a credit from “artist under exclusive licence to X” down to just “X” is not cosmetic. It is the difference between a catalogue that reads as yours and one that reads as theirs, and once delivered it tends to persist for years. Ask who controls delivery, and whether credits get corrected.
Second, a company name on a credit line is a snapshot, not a fact about the present. The entity on Nandy’s masters changed its name in November 2021 and the credits never caught up. If you are chasing income, chase the company number, not the name.
Third, duplicate claims are real and they cost money. One Day and Raha each sit on Apple Music with two different owners asserted. Where two entities claim the same recording, royalties get held, split wrongly, or paid to whoever delivered most recently. Audit that before it compounds.
