Nigerian defence-technology company Terra Industries has signed a commercial agreement with Promethean Resources to deploy autonomous surveillance systems across Promethean’s mining and processing sites in Nigeria.
The deal was signed in New York at the Nigeria–U.S. Strategic Investment Dialogue on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly, in the presence of Industry, Trade and Investment Minister Dr Jumoke Oduwole and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The partnership is one of three interlinked arrangements announced around Promethean at the same forum. The others pair the miner with Vermeer Corporation on precision equipment and Renewvia Energy on solar, battery storage and mini-grids. Together they sit under Nigeria’s push to convert raw-mineral potential into local processing, skilled jobs and deeper U.S.–Nigeria commercial ties.
Terra will give Promethean persistent, technology-enabled security at mining and mineral-processing locations. The planned stack includes autonomous surveillance towers, unmanned aerial systems including Terra’s Iroko drones and ArtemisOS, Terra’s command-and-control platform for threat detection, perimeter monitoring and faster incident response. Initial rollout is proposed for operations in Plateau and Kaduna States, with room to expand.
Terra’s announcement frames the problem simply: mining operators run high-value assets in places with thin security coverage and long response times. Persistent autonomous surveillance is meant to spot threats earlier, cut human exposure and keep people and equipment safer. The company also ties the work to the U.S.–Nigeria Critical Minerals Framework, including more processing inside Nigeria and lasting benefits for host communities.
Terra’s official post describes a commercial agreement to deploy systems to protect personnel and assets. Both point to the same architecture and the same first states. Execution, permits and site-by-site rollout will determine how quickly towers and drones actually go live.
Who the two Companies are
Terra Industries (formerly Terrahaptix) is an Abuja-based multi-domain systems company founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka. It designs and manufactures drones, sentry towers and unmanned ground vehicles, coordinated through ArtemisOS. The firm has raised a $52 million seed across tranches, opened manufacturing in Nigeria and Ghana, and says its systems already protect on the order of $11 billion in assets across energy, mining and other critical infrastructure in several African countries and Canada.
In late August 2026 Terra launched a dedicated commercial division to sell the same autonomous stack used for defence customers to private operators of mines, power plants, pipelines and similar sites. Within a week it closed about $2 million in contracts to protect two lithium operations in Nigeria, planning 20 sentry towers and four Iroko drones on ArtemisOS. Days later it won a $1 million phase-one contract from Anka Metals for the Jema’a Resource Project in Kaduna — a multi-metallic deposit of gold, lithium, copper and nickel at Gidan Waya, tied to a broader $500 million Kaduna mining-development framework with the Africa Finance Corporation.
Promethean Resources, established in 2012 and led by Managing Director Demola Gbadegesin, is a Nigerian minerals company focused on exploration, extraction and processing. Its portfolio spans tin, lead-zinc, lithium, rare earths and gold, with assets and joint ventures across Plateau, Kaduna, Bauchi and other states. Tin has been the historical core: high-grade concentrate from alluvial and pegmatite deposits, with long-standing plans for a domestic smelter to move from concentrate toward higher-purity metal and local value addition. Lithium and other battery-related minerals are earlier-stage but strategically important as Nigeria courts processing, not just export of raw ore.
Why Mining Security is now a Commercial Market
Nigeria’s solid-minerals story is old while the current investment cycle is not. Critical minerals such as lithium, tin, gold, rare earths, nickel, copper sit at the centre of battery, electronics and industrial supply chains. Government policy has shifted toward attracting foreign capital, technology transfer and in-country processing. That ambition collides with a practical constraint: many deposits sit in remote or insecure areas where conventional guarding is expensive, slow and thin on the ground.
Illegal mining, community tension, theft and organised crime have repeatedly disrupted operations and deterred investors. High-profile enforcement actions, including cases involving foreign nationals in lithium-rich states, have underlined that control of sites and data is as strategic as the ore itself. Autonomous towers and drones do not replace community engagement or law enforcement; they change the economics of persistent watch in places where a large human perimeter force is hard to sustain.
Terra’s commercial pitch is that defence-grade autonomy already deployed on power plants and other industrial sites can be productised for miners.
Sentry towers provide fixed coverage; Iroko UAVs add aerial persistence; ArtemisOS fuses feeds for detection and coordinated response. The Promethean deal extends that model from earlier lithium and Jema’a contracts into a named, multi-commodity operator with U.S. equipment and energy partners in the same package.
The wider New York package
The security LOI/agreement did not travel alone. Vermeer is exploring precision mining equipment across Promethean’s iron ore, tin, lithium and gold positions. Renewvia is assessing priority sites for scalable solar, storage and mini-grids so processing is not hostage to unreliable grid power. Minister Oduwole presented the three strands as one platform: U.S. equipment, renewable power and Nigerian-built security, aimed at local value addition and stronger Nigeria–U.S. economic ties.
That packaging matters. Isolated mining licences without power, modern kit or credible site security have a long record of stalling.
Combining the three does not guarantee execution.
Nigeria’s mining sector has seen more announcements than operating plants and this new announcement addresses the three bottlenecks operators themselves cite most often – power, modern kit or credible site security
The story is no longer whether Nigeria has minerals. It is whether operators can run commercial sites at scale: power them, process more of the product locally, and keep people and assets safe without pricing security as a permanent tax on the project.
For Terra, the Promethean agreement is another proof point that its commercial division can sell into the same critical-minerals boom it already serves through lithium and Kaduna contracts. For Promethean, autonomous surveillance is infrastructure, not a press-release accessory especially if production ramps on tin and newer lithium assets expand the footprint that must be watched.
The test is operational: first towers and drones in Plateau and Kaduna, integration with existing site procedures, and whether the New York package moves from dialogue to tonnes, megawatts and fewer incidents at the mine gate.
The Kallon Sentry Tower is designed for applications in agriculture, Oil & Gas, and security, with the tower utilising Artificial Intelligence to detect, identify, and track potential threats up to 5 kilometres away.
