For decades, conversations about African security have largely been framed elsewhere in Western capitals, foreign defence firms, and external intelligence networks. Yet in Abuja, a new kind of company is challenging that pattern, quietly and deliberately, from the heart of Nigeria.
Terra Industries, founded by two young Nigerian engineers, has emerged from stealth with an $11.75 million capital raise, signalling not only investor confidence in a startup, but a broader belief that Africa can design, build, and control the technologies required to protect its own future.
At a time when Nigeria is expanding its energy infrastructure, mineral extraction, and industrial capacity, Terra’s story offers a different narrative of national capability: one rooted in engineering, manufacturing, and sovereign intelligence.
A Nigerian Response to a Continental Problem
Africa is industrialising at speed. Across the continent, infrastructure investment now approaches $100 billion annually, while Nigeria remains central to this expansion, powering homes, industries, and regional supply chains, yet this progress has come with mounting risks.
Across land borders, coastlines, and remote interior regions, terrorism, organised crime, sabotage, and illegal extraction have placed critical assets under constant threat and the cost is staggering. Industry estimates suggest Africa loses hundreds of billions of dollars every year to infrastructure disruption and insecurity.
For Nathan Nwachuku, Terra’s co-founder and chief executive, this imbalance between economic ambition and security reality was impossible to ignore.
Nigeria, he believed, did not suffer from a lack of talent or resolve. What it lacked was locally controlled technology, systems designed for African terrain, African infrastructure, and African sovereignty.
Rather than exporting the problem, he chose to build the solution at home.
Building from Abuja, Not Importing from Abroad
Founded in 2024 alongside Maxwell Maduka, a former Nigerian Navy engineer, Terra Industries was conceived as more than a defence contractor. It was designed as a defence technology prime, vertically integrated, software-driven, and manufactured on the continent.
From its base in Abuja, Terra designs and builds autonomous systems that secure infrastructure across air, land, and maritime domains. These include aerial surveillance platforms, unmanned ground vehicles, intelligent sentry towers, and maritime monitoring systems capable of protecting offshore and underwater assets.
What binds these systems together is ArtemisOS, Terra’s proprietary, AI-powered operating system. The platform enables real-time data fusion, threat detection, autonomous mission planning, and coordinated response, even across vast and difficult environments where traditional security models struggle to function.
Crucially, ArtemisOS is built around data sovereignty. Intelligence collected through Terra’s systems remains under the control of African operators, reducing dependence on foreign intelligence pipelines.
This distinction has allowed Terra to compete and win against long-established global defence firms, offering faster deployment, tighter hardware-software integration, and on-the-ground operational support.
From Concept to Critical Infrastructure
Terra’s technology is no longer theoretical. Its systems are already protecting nationally significant assets across Nigeria and beyond, including power generation facilities, mining operations, and industrial sites tied directly to economic stability.
Among its deployments are major energy installations in Nigeria’s south and north, as well as mineral operations spanning West Africa. Collectively, these assets are valued at over $11 billion, a scale that places Terra among the most operationally advanced defence startups on the continent.
The company’s revenue model blends system deployment with recurring income from data processing, analytics, and orchestration, providing long-term sustainability rather than one-off contracts. It has already generated millions of dollars in commercial revenue and secured its first federal-level government engagement.
Global Capital, Nigerian Control
The $11.75 million funding round was led by 8VC, the U.S. venture firm founded by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, with backing from a mix of global investors spanning Silicon Valley, private equity, and strategic defence capital. Angel investors also participated, alongside African funds that recognised the significance of building such a company locally.
Despite this international backing, Terra’s centre of gravity remains firmly Nigerian.
The company operates a 15,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Abuja, staffed largely by African engineers and technicians. Many members of its technical team have prior service in Nigeria’s armed forces, ensuring that product design reflects operational realities rather than abstract theory.
Maduka himself grew up within Nigerian naval environments before serving as a UAV engineer, while Nwachuku represented Nigeria in international physics competitions before founding a high-growth education platform as a teenager.
Their paths converge in Terra: a company where Nigerian experience is not an afterthought, but the foundation.
Manufacturing Security, Creating Value
Unlike many technology firms that offshore production, Terra manufactures on the continent by design. The company views defence manufacturing not just as a security imperative, but as an industrial opportunity, creating skilled jobs, building advanced capabilities, and retaining intellectual property within Africa.
While Terra plans to expand its software and commercial leadership presence in London and San Francisco, production will continue to scale in Nigeria, with additional facilities planned across the continent.
For Maduka, the objective is clear: Africa should not merely consume security technology; it should produce it.
Reframing Nigeria’s Global Image
Terra Industries’ rise challenges a familiar narrative. Nigeria is often discussed in the context of insecurity, yet here is a Nigerian company confronting that reality with engineering, data, and manufacturing discipline.
It represents a quieter story, one that rarely dominates headlines of Nigerians building systems that protect infrastructure, stabilise economies, and reduce dependency on foreign solutions.
In doing so, Terra is not only securing assets. It is reshaping how Nigeria is perceived: not as a perpetual risk environment, but as a source of strategic capability.
As Africa’s industrial expansion accelerates, the question is no longer whether security will matter, but who will control it.
From Abuja, Terra Industries is offering a distinctly Nigerian answer.
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