The Abuja-based startup is deploying interceptor drones, autonomous ground vehicles, and AI battlefield software and building a second factory in Ghana to meet surging continental demand.
A quiet revolution in African defense technology is unfolding from an industrial compound on the outskirts of Abuja, and its architects are two young Nigerians who were barely out of their teens when they decided the continent could no longer afford to outsource its own protection.
Terra Industries, formerly known as Terrahaptix, a robotics and manufacturing startup based in Abuja is building autonomous security systems powered by artificial intelligence and drones that can detect threats and protect the continent’s critical industries, including energy, mining, telecoms, and agriculture. Now, with a string of new product unveilings, a landmark government partnership, and $34 million in fresh capital, the company is moving from promising startup to what it is increasingly calling Africa’s first sovereign defense prime.
At the center of Terra’s latest push is a suite of autonomous platforms designed to function as a layered defense stack — systems that can surveil, intercept, and respond to threats without waiting for human instruction.
The flagship aerial platform is the Archer, a long-range VTOL surveillance and strike platform capable of monitoring critical sites such as oil pipelines, mine perimeters, and hydropower installations across vast distances. Alongside it sits the Iroko, a tactical UAV built for rapid deployment, designed for first response in contested environments where speed matters more than range.
The most operationally consequential of the new systems, however, is the Kama a high-speed interceptor drone engineered to reach speeds of 300 km/h. Unlike traditional air defense systems that use expensive guided missiles, the Kama acts as a kinetic interceptor, neutralizing hostile drones through direct physical collision or short-range disruption. This kinetic approach offers a lower-cost alternative to traditional missile-based air defenses.
On the ground, Terra has developed the Duma UGV, an autonomous ground drone with an open architecture that enables configurations for ground surveillance and cargo operations, with a maximum operating weight of approximately 350 kilograms. The platform is built for environments where aerial coverage alone is insufficient mine fields, pipeline corridors, and perimeter defense lines where human patrol carries unacceptable risk.
Binding all of these systems together is ArtemisOS, Terra’s proprietary operating software, which monitors and responds to threats in real time. The software suite provides autonomous mission planning and real-time threat detection and represents what distinguishes Terra from a simple hardware manufacturer. The company sells its defense products with ArtemisOS bundled on a recurring-fee model, structured deliberately after the playbooks of US defense technology firms Anduril and Palantir.
Terra’s timing is not coincidental. The threat landscape that these systems are designed to address has deteriorated sharply across sub-Saharan Africa. JNIM, the al-Qaeda coalition active in Mali and Burkina Faso, conducted at least 89 drone operations between 2023 and 2025, and Islamic State Sahel Province struck Niamey International Airport with suicide drones in January 2026. Eleven African countries have now recorded drone attacks by non-state actors, most using cheap quadcopters retrofitted with improvised explosive devices, while counter-drone capabilities across the region have lagged significantly behind.
In 2025, insurgent militant groups led to a temporary shutdown of a tin mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and fighting in Sudan’s civil war caused a blaze at the country’s largest oil refinery. These disruptions not only threatened local economies but set back broader continental development, discouraging the foreign investment that many large infrastructure projects depend on.
The economics of inaction are stark. Africa currently attracts roughly $100 billion in annual infrastructure investment, much of it targeting remote regions with significant mineral reserves. Protecting these assets requires a new category of autonomous security tools that can operate without constant human oversight.
Terra’s response to this demand is not only technological it is industrial. On 19 April 2026, the company announced that it has commenced construction of a new 34,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Accra, Ghana. The plant, designated Pax-2, will serve as the company’s primary regional base for producing autonomous aerial systems and counter-drone technology, and will be the largest drone manufacturing plant in Africa.
The facility is expected to reach annual production capacity of 50,000 units by 2028, and is planned to be commissioned by the end of June 2026. The site is expected to create approximately 120 engineering jobs and operate continuously to meet regional demand for aerial defense systems.
Pax-2 follows Terra’s 15,000-square-foot Pax-1 flagship site in Abuja, Nigeria. Once fully operational, Pax-2 is expected to become the largest drone factory in Africa, exceeding the scale of Pax-1.
Terra’s choice to base the facility in Ghana also reflects commercial realities. Ghana’s free zones regime offers tax holidays and duty exemptions that were not accessible at the same scale in Nigeria, allowing the company to reinvest capital in research and development.
Terra has raised $34 million across two rounds in 2026 an $11.75 million round led by 8VC in January, followed by a $22 million follow-on led by Lux Capital, with participation from Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola’s Resilience17 Capital.
The company has also moved beyond private capital into state partnerships. Earlier this year, Terra signed a joint venture agreement with DICON, Nigeria’s state defense body, under legislation that only opened the agency to private partners in 2023. In 2025, it beat an Israeli consortium to win a $1.2 million contract securing Nigerian hydropower infrastructure.
That competitive win underscores a core part of Terra’s market argument: that African governments and private enterprises should not have to source their security infrastructure from Israel, Turkey, or China not when a Nigerian-built alternative exists, integrated with locally developed software, and not subject to foreign supply chain pressures or geopolitical conditionalities.
The company was founded in 2024 by two young Nigerians 23-year-old Maxwell Maduka and 22-year-old Nathan Nwachuku. Their philosophy is as much political as it is entrepreneurial.
“The only way Africa can have lasting peace is by uniting to build sovereign defense, not by relying on foreign security architecture. We need to control our own destiny by building the tools and systems needed to protect ourselves. That’s how this continent defeats terrorism,” Nwachuku said at the Pax-2 announcement.
It is a position with broad resonance across a continent that has watched foreign defense contractors profit from its instability for decades and one that observers believe could catalyze a new industrial class. Oluwole Ojewale, regional coordinator for Central Africa at the Institute for Security Studies, says that while Terra Industries does not currently face many local competitors, he expects there to be a “proliferation of businesses” in this market, noting that the continent is wide and that critical infrastructure from Angola to Mozambique to Nigeria will all need protection.
The factory is expected to deliver its first batch of Accra-built interceptors by the third quarter of 2026, to be followed by further field testing of the Kama platform in active conflict zones.
The harder question and one that Terra’s own backers are watching closely is whether an African startup can navigate the bureaucratic procurement architecture of African militaries at scale. Integrating autonomous systems into the procurement cycles of African militaries institutions with layered bureaucracies, legacy supplier relationships, and varying degrees of institutional trust is a different kind of challenge from building the drones themselves.
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But the momentum is real. A government partnership in Nigeria. A fully funded factory in Accra. A battle-tested product range. And a founding philosophy that positions African security sovereignty not as an aspiration, but as an industrial project already underway.
For a continent that has spent too long importing the tools of its own defense, Terra Industries is making a pointed argument: that the answers may have been made in Africa all along.
