YASA: A Geospatial Intelligence Framework for Educational Institution Discovery and Access Equity in Sub-Saharan Africa (Evidence from Nigeria)

Access to structured, spatially organised information on tertiary educational institutions remains an underexplored dimension of educational equity in sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria, over 2 million candidates registered for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in 2025, yet structured, queryable access to the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) institutional dataset, spanning over 1,000 accredited institutions and 28,000+ programmes, remained unavailable to the public in a geospatially usable form. This paper presents YASA, a free, open-access geospatial intelligence platform designed to address this information asymmetry. We describe: (a) a multisource geocoding methodology adapted to the naming conventions and data quality challenges of Nigerian tertiary institution data; (b) a course-level subject combination eligibility engine; (c) a health infrastructure proximity layer derived from the GRID3 Nigeria dataset; and (d) a data quality validation framework that identified and corrected systematic state misclassification errors affecting 7.7% of the national dataset. Spatial analysis of the geocoded dataset reveals a marked concentration of accredited institutions in the southern geopolitical zones, with corresponding deficits in the Northeast and Northwest, the same regions with the weakest internet connectivity and the highest proportions of out-of-school children. YASA is currently in public beta at yasa.ng and, to the authors' knowledge, represents the first nationally comprehensive, geocoded, and freely accessible database of JAMB-eligible institutions in Nigeria