PAPERS 52 August 2012 ■ Project Management Journal ■ DOI: 10.1002/pmj INTRODUCTION ■ D emand for public services in sub-Saharan African countries is increasing continuously due to the improvement in governance and awareness in the region. However, poverty, lack of basic infrastruc- ture, and poor industrial development are continuously hindering the ability of the nations to meet this demand. This is exacerbated by a lack of transparency, lack of legal and financial frameworks, and poor capacity in managerial and technical expertise (Gidado, 2010). Ethiopia is located in this region with fast population growth and high public service demand. In Ethiopia, private sector services are not developed enough to satisfy the needs and the demand for public services. To meet these high demands of the public, the Ethiopian government has been plan- ning and implementing public investment projects. During the last ten years, several public investment projects were implemented. Many others are planned for the next five years. The Ethiopian government has set medi- um-term development plans, and the strategic objectives are economic development and poverty reduction. Using these plans, different sectors have prepared detailed plans and programs in different themes, including infrastructure development (Ministry of Finance and Economic Development of Ethiopia [MoFED], 2006a). A grand housing development program, road sector development pro- grams, health sector development programs, power sector programs, and education sector development programs are some of the programs imple- mented by different sectors to improve the public welfare. Under these pro- grams, many public projects have been designed and implemented. However, the preparation and implementation of these public investment projects present many practical challenges. Different studies at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development indicated the lack of systems to check the links between the project objectives and the government strate- gies, and wastage of resources and redundancy of projects (MoFED, 2006b). To minimize the wastage of resources and to eliminate redundant projects, MoFED has tried to revise the system and adopted tools to appraise, moni- tor, and evaluate public investment projects. However, these public invest- ment projects are criticized for not being the priority of the public and for not generating enough additional government revenues to cover their run- ning and maintenance costs. Governance of Public Investment Projects in Ethiopia Asmamaw Tadege Shiferaw, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Civil and Transport Engineering, Trondheim, Norway Ole Jonny Klakegg, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Civil and Transport Engineering, Trondheim, Norway Tore Haavaldsen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Civil and Transport Engineering, Trondheim, Norway ABSTRACT ■ The purpose of this article is to map and review the governance of public investment projects in Ethiopia and to identify the most important front-end challenges of public investment proj- ects in the country. The research focuses on the front-end governance of major construction projects. The findings of the research indicate that the top-down project approach, lack of mandatory control gateways at the front-end project preparation and decision-making stages, and weak links between project stake- holders affected the effectiveness of the project governance system. In additon to this, the most important factors that could affect the rele- vance and sustainability of public investment projects are identified. KEYWORDS: decision making; project gov- ernance; public investment projects; relevance; sustainability Project Management Journal, Vol. 43, No. 4, 52–69 © 2012 by the Project Management Institute Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/pmj.21280