Attacks on critical infrastructure in Africa are not uncommon. In 2025, a tin mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was temporarily closed due to armed group activity, and a fire broke out at the country’s largest oil refinery during the Sudanese civil war.
Such disruptions could not only threaten regional economies, but also set back the entire continent and discourage foreign investment, on which many large-scale infrastructure projects depend.
“These are serious attacks carried out against strategic infrastructure that directly impacts economic development,” Oluwole Ojewale, regional coordinator for Central Africa at the Institute for Security Studies, told CNN. He cited the example of Nigeria, where terrorist attacks on oil pipelines have been a barrier to the country’s ability to meet production quotas.
He says both public and private companies are changing their protection strategies and turning to autonomous systems to address security concerns.
Terra Industries (formerly Terrahaptix) is a robotics and manufacturing startup based in Abuja, Nigeria, that builds autonomous security systems powered by artificial intelligence and drones that detect threats and help protect the continent’s critical industries, including energy, mining, communications, and agriculture.
The company was founded in 2024 by two young Nigerians, Maxwell Maduka, 23, and Nathan Nwachukwu, 22.
In February 2025, the company launched what Nwachukwu calls Africa’s largest drone factory in a 15,000 square foot (1,394 square meter) space outside Abuja. Nwachukwu has not yet reached full production capacity, but says it can manufacture 30,000 drones a year. This includes long-range drones built for surveillance missions, quadcopters for first response and data collection, and small self-driving vehicles for ground surveillance.
In May, the company won a $1.2 million contract with private security firm Nethawk Solutions to deploy AI-powered drones and surveillance towers at two hydropower stations in Nigeria. The system helps the company detect and monitor potential threats such as bandits.
Co-founder and CEO Nwachukwu said the company has already exported drones to eight African countries and Canada, protecting an estimated $11 billion worth of assets. This includes critical infrastructure such as power plants, lithium mines, gold mines, and refineries.
“We scaled with very few resources,” Nwachuku says. “Terra actually raised less than $600,000 today and has current revenue of $1.9 million.”
Nwachukwu’s goal was always to help Africa industrialize. To do that, “we have to address the common denominator of anxiety,” he says.
One of our key early focuses was to develop and build our software and hardware in-house. The AI-powered software, called ArtemisOS, is the brain of the system and has garnered the company international attention.
“We collect all the surveillance data from all these different systems. We analyze this data to look for threats in real time. And when we find them, we alert the necessary response teams, whether it’s security agencies or internal response teams,” Nwachukwu says.
He believes the in-house approach has helped the company differentiate itself from its competitors. Some sensors and cameras are imported from countries such as South Korea, but the software, airframe, propellers and lithium-ion battery packs are manufactured in-house. “This helps (provide) more secure data security,” he added.
Terra Industries is able to maintain data sovereignty because it partners with a local cloud platform, PipeOps, rather than a global company. “We must keep data in African hands,” Nwachukwu said, adding that this not only supports African businesses but also helps keep data safe from global breaches.
Manufacturing in Africa is cheaper than in America or Europe, and hiring is cheaper, so staying local also lowers costs. According to Nwachuku, these savings are passed on to customers, making initial hardware purchases up to 55% cheaper than international competitors. Besides the initial cost, the client must pay for the software annually. Without a software subscription, Terra hardware will not function, but clients can integrate Terra software with hardware from other providers.
Ojewale of the Institute for Security Studies said Terra Industries currently doesn’t have many local competitors, but he expects there will be a “surge in business” in the market. “The continent is large and we need to protect all critical infrastructure from Angola to Mozambique to Nigeria.”
Victoria Rubadiri contributed to this article.
