Roads, in particular rural roads, play a major role in deve- lopment. In Ethiopia, where the vast majority of the popula- tion depends on agricultural production, this is even more so, and the country's road network has become a major po- licy issue with significant consequences for the population. An extensive network of 114,397 km of different roads has been constructed, maintained, and classified to date. Alt- hough community roads account for nearly two-thirds of the country's total road network, virtually no work deals specifically with issues related to their construction. In an attempt to address this lack of information, this paper traces the history of the classified road network and of the governmental sector that has been in char...