Terra Industries, the Nigerian defence expertise startup, has turn out to be one of the recognisable names within the African deep tech sector.
Terra has earned the visibility. Founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka, the corporate designs and manufactures autonomous drones, sentry towers and crewless floor autos, all linked by means of its proprietary ArtemisOS platform. In August, it closed a $52 million seed round, the biggest in Africa. Terra presents a glimpse of what’s attainable if an ecosystem can assist extra firms to that stage.
The United Nations Development Programme defines deep tech as expertise constructed on scientific discoveries, engineering improvements and advances in analysis, with intensive analysis and improvement at its core. It consists of firms growing drones and robotics, semiconductor and computing applied sciences, biotechnology, medical gadgets and a few types of synthetic intelligence.
Businesses in Africa’s tech ecosystem are principally constructed round utilizing expertise reasonably than growing it. A fintech firm can construct a funds product with out manufacturing the smartphone its prospects use, simply as a logistics startup can construct software program on prime of cloud infrastructure or networks developed and operated by different firms. The underlying {hardware} and foundational programs exist already; these startups merely apply them to market problems.
Deep tech brings that expertise into the corporate. To flip engineering breakthroughs into commercially viable merchandise, such firms could have to design and repeatedly check prototypes, supply specialised parts, work with researchers and engineers, and entry laboratories or manufacturing services.
Building deep tech is an uphill climb
For Chukwuemeka Afigbo, who convenes the Africa Deep Tech Foundation, a group centered on supporting deep tech builders and growing the ecosystem round them, {hardware} firms locally have raised issues about the price of bringing parts into the nation.
“The hardware folks would tell you there’s a lot of support they need that they haven’t necessarily seen. For example, like policies around the amount of money they pay to bring in components to build stuff in the country,” he mentioned in a dialog with TechCabal in October.
A 2021 baseline examine commissioned by the Nigerian Communications Commission discovered that 84% of the hardware components utilized in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector are imported. Those parts embody printed circuit boards, semiconductors, connectors, antennas, and different digital elements. For {hardware} firms constructing and testing merchandise regionally, parts that can’t be sourced regionally should be imported, exposing them to transport prices, international trade actions, customs procedures, and import duties.
Africa’s capability to provide a few of the applied sciences underpinning the worldwide economic system stays restricted. The continent accounts for less than 1% of worldwide semiconductor financial output, in keeping with the African Academy of Sciences. Its place within the semiconductor trade is targeting design or testing.
The identical constraints are turning into seen in synthetic intelligence. AI is now one of many largest expertise conversations in Africa, however most of the merchandise accessible are constructed on infrastructure developed elsewhere. Building the underlying programs requires specialised chips, information centres, engineering expertise and analysis capability, and Africa presently accounts for 0.6% of global data-centre capacity.
Funding can be a constraint. In 2025, African startups raised $3.42 billion, with fintech accounting for $1.37 billion, or about 40% of the whole, in keeping with TechCabal Insights’ State of Tech in Africa report. A Briter Intelligence mapping of the sector discovered that African deep tech startups raised about $3 billion throughout 360 offers between 2013 and the primary half of 2023.
The economics of constructing deep tech might assist clarify this disparity. Import prices and a skinny analysis base could make a {hardware} firm’s path to income longer and its failures dearer than these of a software program firm. Capital tends to observe companies the place there’s a clear path to producing returns on investments.
Governments throughout Africa are being attentive to superior expertise, however AI has acquired a disproportionate share of that spotlight. Nigeria’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy was published in September 2025; Kenya adopted a national AI strategy in 2025; Egypt up to date its AI technique; and South Africa has been developing an AI policy framework to information the nation’s method to AI governance, improvement, and adoption.
The consideration is comprehensible. AI is rising and attracting capital, however an AI-heavy coverage agenda dangers overshadowing the distinct, bodily calls for of the broader deep tech sector. As Afigbo notes, authorities consciousness stays in its early phases. At the identical time, curiosity and scattered initiatives exist; public coverage has but to match the capital depth and supply-chain necessities of constructing laborious tech on the continent.
“Yes, there is government awareness and interest, but still relatively nascent,” he mentioned. “A lot of good things are happening, but we need10 times more than that to happen. It’s a journey.”
Building the situations for deep tech
The Africa Deep Tech Foundation has grown from a small on-line group into a community of greater than 5,000 individuals, with a core group of about 200 deep tech practitioners throughout Africa and the diaspora, in keeping with Afigbo. He mentioned it has organised incubation programmes and rallied assist for early-stage founders. Other firms are additionally engaged on items of the ecosystem.
ChipMango, a semiconductor design and engineering expertise improvement firm, is training students and technical professionals in trendy chip design throughout Africa. Signvrse uses AI-powered 3D avatars to translate speech into signal language in actual time. NovFeed converts natural waste into high-protein fish feed to sort out meals insecurity. Envisionit Deep AI automates radiology diagnostics in rural clinics. BasiGo and Spiro now handle giant fleets of electrical buses and bikes supported by battery-swapping networks.
For the ecosystem to assist extra firms on that journey, it must create situations that make constructing deep tech simpler. This might embody capital, higher entry to manufacturing and specialised infrastructure, a deeper pool of engineering and analysis expertise, and treating deep tech as a broader discipline than AI by growing insurance policies and infrastructure that assist the applied sciences underpinning the sector.
Terra’s success makes the opportunity of a thriving deep tech sector simpler to see. It exhibits that international buyers are keen to again an African firm constructing subtle bodily expertise. Ultimately, whether or not Terra stays a rare outlier or turns into the vanguard of a broader motion is dependent upon whether or not Africa’s tech ecosystem can evolve quick sufficient to fulfill the heavy calls for of deep tech.
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