Africa’s second most populous country Ethiopia, has set an ambitious target to double the length of its roads network by 2020 from its extent in 2015.This is according to the government’s road authority . In 2015, at the end of GTP-I, the road network had reached 100,000km. Now the network stands at 121,171km, according to the roads ministry, including gravel roads. This represents a large expansion from 1990, when there were just 19,000km of roads. About 90% of them are asphalt. Ethiopia’s road-building now consumes about a quarter of the federal government’s annual infrastructure spending.According to Samson Wondimu, a Director at the Ministry, the road building programme had spent about US $11bn over the past 20 years, and that the annual budget for the roads sector had grown 20% to reach US $1.7bn. The present programme includes flagship projects such as the 200km Hawassa expressway in the central-southern area of the country, which got under way after a 4 year ...