Terra Industries has been awarded a $1 million contract by Anka Metals to provide security for the Jema’a Resource Project, a multi-metallic mining site in Kaduna State’s Gidan Waya area holding deposits of gold, lithium, copper and nickel.
The Nigerian defence-tech company said in a statement that the deal marks the first contract under a broader security partnership covering Anka Metals’ full mining portfolio.
Terra will deploy autonomous surveillance and site protection systems for the project, running on ArtemisOS, its proprietary command-and-control software platform.
ArtemisOS coordinates Terra’s hardware fleet — including Iroko, its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used for aerial surveillance, alongside Duma, its unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), and fixed sentry towers — feeding real-time footage and threat detection back to a central operations dashboard.
The same stack underpins deployments the company has supplied to defence and government clients. The company said the phase-one contract covers the initial rollout, with the partnership structured to extend across Anka Metals’ other mining assets as they come online.
Why Kaduna’s mining sites need securing
The Jema’a Resource Project sits on one of Nigeria’s most closely watched mineral assets. In July, the project and the Kaduna Mining Development Company signed a $500 million financing and development framework with the Africa Finance Corporation, covering mining assets across the state. Kaduna State was the first in Nigeria to secure such a partnership through a state-owned mining company, according to Anka Metals chief executive Nere Emiko.
Also read: Terra Industries closes $2m in contracts to secure lithium mining operations in Nigeria
Terra said mining, oil and power operators across Africa often run critical assets in locations with thin security coverage and long emergency response times, a gap its commercial division was built to close.
The Anka Metals deal follows a separate $2 million security agreement Terra closed with two undisclosed lithium mining operators earlier this month, days after its commercial division launched on 28 August.
Who is Terra Industries?
Terra Industries was founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka to build an autonomous defence-industrial base for Africa and the wider Global South.
The company closed a $52 million seed round in August, its largest funding round to date, backed by investors including 8VC, Lux Capital, Silent Ventures and SV Angel. It also appointed former SpaceX executive Ben MacWilliams as VP of Strategy and opened its first office outside Africa, in London.
Before launching its commercial division, Terra’s technology had already been deployed to protect power plants, mines and other critical assets valued at roughly $11 billion across multiple African countries, the company said.
Its product line spans long- and mid-range drones, autonomous sentry towers, unmanned ground vehicles and maritime surveillance systems, all coordinated through ArtemisOS. The company says it is on track to book more than $100 million in contracts by the end of 2026.
The Anka Metals contract extends that footprint into Kaduna’s emerging solid minerals sector, at a time when the state is positioning itself as a hub for AFC-backed mineral investment.
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