Abuja-based robotics and drone manufacturer Terra Industries is partnering with Miva Open University to build integrated robotics and drone labs across Miva’s learning centres, starting with a pilot program in Abuja.
What The Partnership Covers
Under the arrangement, Miva students will learn to design, assemble, test, and fly drones as part of their academic programs rather than as a standalone elective. Terra will run hands-on workshops, train Miva’s faculty to deliver the curriculum, and offer internships and jobs to the strongest-performing students to come out of the program.
The pilot begins in Abuja, where both organisations are headquartered, before any wider expansion across Miva’s other learning centres.
Why This Pairing Makes Sense
Miva Open University is Nigeria’s first fully online university, founded by the uLesson Group in 2023 and licensed by the National Universities Commission. Its School of Computing already runs undergraduate programs in cybersecurity, computer science, cloud computing, AI, and data science, which gives Terra a built-in pipeline of students with the technical grounding to move into robotics and drone work.
Terra Industries, for its part, has spent the past two years building what it describes as one of the largest drone manufacturing operations on the continent. Founded in 2024 by Maxwell Maduka and Nathan Nwachuku, the company operates a large-scale facility outside Abuja that produces autonomous drones and ground robots for critical infrastructure protection, serving industries like energy, mining, and agriculture. It has raised over $11 million in seed funding from investors including 8VC, and it manufactures core components such as airframes, propellers, and battery systems in-house rather than relying on imported parts.
The Talent Argument Behind It
The company’s framing for the partnership centres on a straightforward premise: engineering talent develops through hands-on building rather than theory alone. This is presented as a deliberate strategy to develop the practical skills needed for the industrial base Terra says the continent will need to build.
For a company that has built its own manufacturing capability largely in-house, feeding a talent pipeline through direct workshops and faculty training is a logical extension. It gives Terra early access to students who already understand its equipment and processes before they graduate, while giving Miva students exposure to real hardware and a potential path to employment at a fast-scaling local company.
What To Watch Next
Several details will determine how much this partnership actually delivers. It’s not yet clear how many students the Abuja pilot will accommodate, how long the workshops will run, or what proportion of participants will realistically get internship or job offers versus simply completing the coursework.
There’s also the question of scale. Rolling a hands-on robotics and drone lab out to Miva’s other learning centres requires equipment, trained instructors, and workshop space at each location. This is easier said than done for a fully online university whose value proposition has largely been flexible, remote learning rather than physical lab infrastructure. How Terra and Miva solve for that will shape whether this stays a single Abuja pilot or genuinely becomes a multi-centre program.
