Ethiopia is a country of many nations, nationalities, and peoples, with a total population of 91.7 million. Ethiopia has experienced strong economic growth over the past decade. Urbanization offers new opportunities in Ethiopia to improve education, health, and other public services, as more concentrated populations are easier to reach. In this context, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) acknowledges the important role of the urban sector in overall economic growth and to invest in it. In this context, the government introduced the urban local government development program (ULGDP) in 2008 as a performance grant to ULGs. This second ULGDP is a follow-up to the successful first phase. The current ULGDP is jointly funded by the government and the World Bank. The program, which will scale up the support to cover 44 cities, will provide the highly needed investment funds to promote the cities as growth engines in the GoE's urban development strategy, support the institutional capacity of all tiers of governance (federal, regional and local) in urban development, and enhance the incentives of everyone involved.