Terra Industries, a Nigerian defence technology company specialising in drones and counter-drone systems, is expanding beyond its home market by opening its first international manufacturing facility in Accra, the capital of Ghana. The factory will serve as the company's main regional manufacturing hub, with ambitious plans to scale production from several hundred units today to as many as 50,000 drones and counter-drone systems within the next two years.
The company says the systems it builds are specifically designed for African conditions. The doctrines are different, the kind of systems needed are different, a company representative told Bloomberg. You would need a lot more attributable, low-cost and intelligent-centric systems. You also need a system that can survive the very harsh terrain, especially of Africa, which a lot of the systems from the West are not built for.
The expansion comes against a backdrop of rapidly evolving security threats across the continent. According to ACLED, a conflict monitoring group that tracks violence across Africa, the continent now accounts for the majority of Islamic State-linked activity, with more than two-thirds of all such incidents recorded there in the first half of 2025. Non-state armed groups have gained access to cheap, widely available drone components that provide them with tactical advantages for strikes against critical infrastructure and military positions.
Countering these attacks is becoming more complex and costly, requiring jammers, radars and more advanced equipment. Analysts note that the low cost at which armed groups can deploy drone technology creates an asymmetric challenge for conventional military forces. Terra Industries sees this gap as its core business opportunity, having already tested its systems with governments across West Africa.
The company's ambitions extend well beyond Africa. We are building out a regional network of factories across the continent, the company said. We are also starting to work with other emerging markets, like in Latin America and Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, because essentially the threats that we are facing here have become very transferable across the emerging markets.
Terra Industries plans to raise a larger funding round in the coming months to finance its expansion of manufacturing capacity. The company represents a growing trend of African defence technology firms developing indigenous capabilities rather than relying on imported Western systems that are often ill-suited to local conditions and prohibitively expensive for the budgets of most African governments.