Mapping educational infrastructure for rapid urban growth through analysis of spatial inequality and school siting priorities in Adama city, Ethiopia

Abstract Rapid peri-urban growth in Global South secondary cities consistently outpaces municipal public service delivery, generating severe spatial inequalities. This paper examines the spatial and institutional production of primary school infrastructure deficits in Adama City, Ethiopia. Deploying a mixed-method approach, this study integrates a GIS-based Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) site suitability model configured at a precise 30 m $$\:\times\:$$ 30 m grid resolution, a 384-household socioeconomic survey, 12 key informant interviews with planning and education officials, and four focus group discussions with community leaders, parents, and teachers. The spatial model indicates that while 16.14% of municipal land is highly suitable for educational infrastructure, existing school infrastructure remains concentrated in saturated central cores rather than in these newly identified peripheral priority zones. This spatial mismatch coincides with severe overcrowding: the 12 schools identified as operating above capacity average 58 students per classroom. Analytically, spatial and field validation indicated that 73% of the area classified as underserved (by household, administrative, and stakeholder indicators) fell within model-identified high-suitability zones; because the validation indicators and the model criteria draw on related conditions, this is evidence of convergence rather than fully independent validation. Qualitative findings suggest that accessibility deficits are shaped not merely by geographic friction, but also by institutional land-reservation failures, unauthorized land-use conversions, and un-synchronized capital investment cycles. This study contributes by indicating how spatial decision-support tools may need to be coupled with institutional governance reforms to enforce land-use zoning and mitigate infrastructure lag in rapidly expanding secondary cities. For Adama and comparable Global South secondary cities, the findings suggest that GIS-AHP suitability outputs should be embedded within binding land-reservation and inter-agency coordination mechanisms before, rather than after, peripheral settlement occurs.