A Nigerian cybersecurity startup has raised $1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Terra Industries, as the African defense and critical-infrastructure company expands into digital security. The funding round, revealed on Sept. 18, also attracted participation from Resilience17, the investment fund of Flutterwave co-founder and CEO Olugbenga Agboola, alongside other investors.
Lagos-based Aeon, founded by Samuel Ogbonyomi, Ben Eluan and Alex Idowu, is developing a cybersecurity platform designed to give organizations a single view of vulnerabilities across networks, code, cloud infrastructure and endpoints. Ogbonyomi, Aeon’s co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement: “Almost every operator we worked with had a dozen security tools and no single view of their exposure.”
The investment follows a pilot between Terra and Aeon earlier this year and includes a commercial joint venture to deploy Aeon’s cybersecurity technology across military and commercial operations. The partnership will allow Terra to offer customers protection covering both physical infrastructure and the digital systems that operate it. The companies plan to jointly pursue contracts with governments and corporations across the Global South.
Cyber threats in Africa have surged, with financial institutions, government agencies and other critical infrastructure bearing the brunt. Terra cited an INTERPOL assessment that estimated cyber incidents across Africa had caused more than $3 billion in losses since 2019. The report also identified finance, healthcare, energy and government among sectors heavily targeted by cybercrime.
