A young Abuja-based company, Terra Industries, is positioning itself at the centre of a continental debate about defence self-reliance. Founded in 2024 by two engineers in their early twenties, the firm designs and manufactures drones, autonomous surveillance systems and unmanned ground vehicles — claiming more than 70 percent local sourcing — and says its technology already protects infrastructure worth around $11bn across eight African countries. The company has secured $34m in seed funding led by prominent US defence-technology investors and plans to make its second facility in Accra (Ghana's capital) Africa's largest drone manufacturing hub, with a target output of 50,000 units annually by 2028. Analysts caution, however, that building local production capacity is not the same as achieving true defence sovereignty, which requires transparent procurement rules, intellectual-property ownership and civil-society oversight — governance structures that, critics say, remain largely absent across the continent.