It is still challengeable to develop oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalyst with low cost and high efficiency to accelerate the kinetic of water splitting. Herein, a facile solvothermal method is put forward to synthesize three-dimensional porous cobalt ferrite and carbon nanorod hybrid network constructed by a network of carbon nanorods in which cobalt ferrite nanoparticles are uniformly embedded. The cobalt ferrite and carbon nanorod hybrid electrocatalyst delivers outstanding OER performance, especially a very low onset potential (1.49 V vs. RHE), a very low Tafel slope (38 mV dec(-1)), and to obtain a current density of 10 mA cm(-2) only requires a very small potential (1.56 V), which is much better than cobalt ferrite, and comparable to RuO2. Furthermore, it also displays excellent long-term stability under 25 h of chronoamperometric testing. The reason why cobalt ferrite and carbon nanorod hybrid has such superior OER performance stems from the low oxygen coordination and solid-state redox couples of cobalt ferrite, the conductive carbon nanorod skeleton and the unique three-dimensional porous nanoarchitecture, which can not only sustain the high conductivity and structural stability of the hybrid catalyst, but also facilitate the electron/ion transfer and oxygen bubble diffusion and bare more electrochemically active surface sites. This paper proposes a new scheme for the synthesis of non-noble transition metal oxide-based OER electrocatalysts with rationally designed nanoarchitecture and high efficiency.