Grace Ashiru
JuiceMe today announced the acquisition of Ajiraworks, a compliance-led employment firm operating across the UK and Kenya, and the appointment of its founder, Catherine Ochako, as Global Director, Employer of Record (EOR). Ochako also joins JuiceMe as a board member and shareholder. The transaction brings proven operational assets, compliance infrastructure, and cross-border employment intellectual property (IP) directly into JuiceMe’s core business.
The acqui-hire reflects JuiceMe’s conviction that winning in African employment infrastructure requires acquiring the systems, partnerships, and institutional knowledge that take years to build. Rather than starting from scratch, JuiceMe is absorbing a working compliance model that has already been stress-tested across multiple markets.
Ajiraworks was built specifically to solve the structural challenges companies face when entering African markets, including fragmented regulations, inconsistent payroll systems, and limited local infrastructure. Through the acquisition, JuiceMe gains Ajiraworks’ compliance frameworks, market entry playbooks, and established partnerships across key jurisdictions. These assets will form the operational backbone of JuiceMe’s expanded EOR offering.
Ochako brings more than a decade of experience scaling cross-border employment operations. Prior to founding Ajiraworks, she built an EOR function from the ground up, expanding operations across 29 markets and leading a distributed team spanning the UK, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya. Her track record of converting complex, multi-jurisdictional employment challenges into scalable systems is precisely what JuiceMe is bringing in-house.
Commenting on the acquisition, Ochako says that “often, companies focus on speed when entering new markets. But without the right structure, that growth introduces risk. The real opportunity is to build systems that allow companies to scale quickly while staying compliant and in control. JuiceMe’s acquisition of Ajiraworks will allow us to achieve exactly that.”
In her new role at JuiceMe, Ochako’s mandate is to build and lead a structured employment layer that enables companies to hire, pay, and manage talent across African markets with full compliance and operational consistency. The combined assets from the Ajiraworks acquisition will accelerate the build-out of this infrastructure significantly, giving JuiceMe a head start that would have taken years to replicate organically.
Lawrence Diamond, co-founder of JuiceMe, says that “bringing Ajiraworks into JuiceMe is a deliberate move to accelerate what we’re building across Africa. Catherine and her team have already solved many of the hardest operational and compliance challenges in cross-border employment.”
“By integrating that expertise directly into our platform, we’re accelerating our expansion across the continent, but doing so with the structure, reliability, and local expertise that companies need to succeed in Africa.”
Sandile Dlamini, founder of JuiceMe, adds “cross-border employment in Africa is still far more operationally complex than many companies anticipate.”
“Catherine brings not just a wealth of expertise, but real infrastructure: tested compliance systems, operational processes, and local market knowledge developed over years of execution. Bringing that into JuiceMe significantly strengthens our ability to help companies scale across Africa with confidence.”
