On Monday, Terra Industries, the ambitious West African security defence startup, announced the construction of Pax-2, its second major drone manufacturing facility, this time in Accra, Ghana.
The company said in a blog post that the “34,000-square-foot site as a regional base for building drone and counter-drone systems.” It comes after Terra raised $34 million to expand production, scale deployments, and grow engineering teams across Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
Pax-2 follows Pax-1, a 15,000-square-foot facility in Abuja, Nigeria. Once completed, Terra says Pax-2 will become “the largest drone manufacturing site in Africa, with a projected capacity of 50,000 units annually by 2028.”
Terra says that the Ghana facility will “create 120 engineering jobs and operate on a continuous production schedule to meet rising demand for these systems across the region.”
The product lineup includes systems like the Archer VTOL surveillance drone, the Iroko UAV for tactical deployment, and a new interceptor drone called Kama, designed for high-speed counter-drone operations.
“The only way Africa can have lasting peace is by uniting to build sovereign defence, not by relying on foreign security architecture,” Terra’s co-founder and CEO Nathan Nwachuku said.
“We need to control our own destiny by building the tools and systems needed to protect ourselves. That's how this continent defeats terrorism. This is the beginning of that vision playing out more concretely, and we chose Ghana for Pax-2 because of its talent, strategic position, and political will to become a serious defence exporter and prove that this can be done at scale.”
The company frames this expansion as part of a broader shift in how African countries think about security and manufacturing. Conflict patterns in regions like the Sahel have increasingly involved low-cost drone technologies, including modified commercial systems used in asymmetric warfare.
Ghana was chosen for the new facility, according to the company, because of its “talent pool, location, and policy direction toward becoming a defence manufacturing hub.” Construction on Pax-2 is already in its final phase, with operations expected to begin by June 2026.
Beyond the scale of the factory itself, the bigger shift here is industrial: defence manufacturing is slowly moving from import-heavy systems to local production.
That creates a different kind of pressure. Countries are no longer just users of security technology; they are becoming producers of it. That brings opportunities in jobs and skills but also raises questions around regulation, oversight, and how rapidly such systems are deployed in conflict-prone areas.
Ogbonda Chivumnovu
