Africa’s Hottest Defence Startup Goes All In On Ghana Over Nigerian Home Base

Nigeria’s Terra Industries, a startup manufacturing autonomous drones, is opening its first overseas factory in Ghana, in a strategic pivot that highlights the startup’s determination to scale faster outside its home market rather than wait for local policies to catch up.

The 34,000-square-foot drone manufacturing facility in Accra, named Pax-2, will become Africa’s largest such plant when it begins operations in June 2026, more than doubling the footprint of Terra’s Abuja factory.

The company, founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachukwu and Maxwell Maduka, and now backed by USD 34 M from investors including Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC and Lux Capital, has already secured contracts protecting some USD 11 B worth of critical infrastructure across eight African nations, including hydropower plants, lithium mines and oil facilities.

But for a startup positioning itself as Africa’s first “defence prime” – a vertically integrated manufacturer of autonomous surveillance systems – the choice of Ghana raises a pointed question: Why not Nigeria?

Ghana’s incentives appear to be the decisive factor. The country’s free zones regime offers a 10-year corporate tax holiday followed by a reduced 15% rate, along with duty exemptions on imported machinery and raw materials.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Defence Industries Corporation (DICON) Act 2023, intended to encourage local military manufacturing, has yet to produce tangible results for Terra beyond a memorandum of understanding signed in February.

With over 80% of Terra’s components already sourced locally, the company’s CEO, Nwachuku, cited Ghana’s “political will to become a serious defense exporter” as a key reason for the expansion.

Yet the move carries commercial risk. Terra has generated over USD 2.5 M in revenue since its founding, but its new Ghana facility is projected to produce 50,000 units annually by 2028, a leap in production that will require a massive expansion of its customer base beyond the USD 50 M in contracts the company has already signed. The company’s primary market remains Nigeria, where the vast majority of its existing clients are based.

Ghana is betting that Terra’s arrival will do more than fill government coffers. The government has already committed to distributing 272,000 metric tonnes of fertiliser nationwide and allocating GHC 2.7 B (~USD 243 M) for cocoa farmer support in 2026, part of a broader agricultural transformation agenda. A local drone industry could complement these efforts, particularly in precision agriculture and infrastructure monitoring.

But it’s becoming apparent that Terra’s ambition to build “sovereign defense” capabilities for Africa is running ahead of the regulatory frameworks needed to support it at home. Until Nigeria matches Ghana’s incentives, the continent’s most-funded defense-tech startup will keep building its future on more welcoming ground.