[2] This spurfowl is endemic to Ethiopia, having a range restricted to the Ethiopian highlands on either side of the Blue Nile River between Lake Tana and its confluence with the Jamma River, as well as its tributaries between these points.

Originally thought to inhabit Typha beds growing along small, shallow watercourses and acacia thickets, studies in 1996 found Harwood's spurfowl in a site with neither of these.

Harwood's spurfowl was described in 1899 by the English ornithologists Herbert Weld Blundell and Simon Fraser, 14th Lord Lovat from a specimen that they had collected in the Aheafeg area of Ethiopia.

[3] The specific epithet was chosen to honour the taxidermist and naturalist Leonard Harwood (fl.

[4] The species is now placed in the genus Pternistis that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler in 1832.