Speaker
Description
Bazza, A. L.
Federal Capital Territory College of Education Zuba, Abuja
bazzahmed3@gmail.com
Track: Digital Transformation in Higher Education
By
Dr. Ahmed Lawan Bazza, Abubakar Sadique Abullahi, Kabiru Muazu and Waziri Hassan
Department of Agricultural Education
School of Vocational and Technical Education
FCT College of Education, Zuba, Abuja, Nigeria
Email: bazzahmed3@gmail.com
Abstract
African tertiary Institutions must bridge two gaps: the digital divide and the divide between academic curricula and grassroots economic realities. This presentation introduces digital goat banking a technology enhanced revolving livestock asset model as a sustainable empowerment platform that simultaneously addresses both gaps. The work present a living lab framework where higher education Institutions co-develop low-cost digital tools (USSD/SMS, offline-first ledgers, community kiosks) with rural goat banking groups, embedding community co-governance at every stage. Students from ICT, agriculture, business, and social sciences gain experiential learning by solving real-world challenges: tracking assets, preventing fraud, building digital literacy, and measuring empowerment outcomes. Early evidence suggests improved loan repayment rates, increased women’s decision-making power, and higher student employability. The presentation argues that digital asset-based platforms like goat banking offer a replicable, low-bandwidth pathway for reimagining future-ready higher education ecosystems in Africa thus shifting tertiary institutions from degree factories to community innovation brokers.
Keywords: Digital divide; Goat banking; Tertiary Institutions ecosystems; Community empowerment; Asset-based living labs