Africa’s most-funded defence technology startup is building its biggest factory yet — and it’s not in Nigeria.
Terra Industries has announced the construction of a 34,000-square-foot drone manufacturing facility in Accra, Ghana, named Pax-2, which will serve as the company’s primary regional manufacturing base for drone and counter-drone systems. Construction is in its final phase, with full operations expected by the end of June 2026. Once operational, the factory is projected to reach an annual production capacity of 50,000 units by 2028 and create 120 engineering jobs in Ghana.
Pax-2 more than doubles the footprint of Terra’s flagship 15,000-square-foot factory in Abuja and targets an annual output of 50,000 units by 2028. The facility will produce three of Terra’s aerial systems: the Archer VTOL, a long-range surveillance and strike platform; the Iroko UAV, built for rapid tactical deployment; and Kama, a high-speed counter-drone interceptor capable of reaching 300 kilometres per hour.
Founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachukwu and Maxwell Maduka, 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 sells defence hardware including drones with its proprietary ArtemisOS software on a recurring-fee basis, modelled on US defence primes Anduril and Palantir. It says it already protects roughly $11 billion in assets across eight African countries, including hydropower plants, lithium mines, and oil facilities.
The choice of Ghana over Nigeria is deliberate. CEO Nathan Nwachukwu said Ghana was selected for Pax-2 because of its talent pool, strategic position, and political will to become a serious defence exporter and prove that this can be done at scale.
The expansion lands against a backdrop of intensifying drone warfare across the Sahel. 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.
The Ghana expansion also follows a February memorandum of understanding between Terra and the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria to establish a joint venture for local assembly and training. Whether that vision holds up under the pressures of geopolitics, production scale, and regulatory complexity across multiple jurisdictions will be the real test — but with $34 million raised, a government partnership in Nigeria, and now a regional manufacturing base in Ghana, Terra is making the most credible case yet that Africa’s defence industrial future does not have to be imported.
