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The Rise · Profile

The Twenty-Two-Year-Olds Building Nigeria's Drones

Terra Industries has raised $34m in two rounds this year to build autonomous drones and sentry towers from a base in Lagos, with backers ranging from Silicon Valley funds to Flutterwave's own chief executive. It is a bet that Africa's next defensible export is hardware, not payments.

The Gridline10 July 20267 min read

The Twenty-Two-Year-Olds Building Nigeria's Drones — illustrative image — Photo: Don McCullough (via Openverse) · CC BY 2.0

Nathan Nwachuku was twenty-two and Maxwell Maduka twenty-four when they founded Terra Industries in 2024. Two years later, the Lagos-based company they built has become one of the most closely watched hardware bets in African tech — not for a payments app or a lending product, but for autonomous drones, sentry towers and unmanned ground vehicles built for surveillance and security. In January 2026, Terra raised $11.75m in a round led by the US venture firm 8VC. By mid-February, it had added a further $22m in an extension led by Lux Capital, taking its total 2026 raise to $34m. For a category that barely existed on the continent three years ago — African defence technology — the speed of that capital stack is itself the story.