Herein, an anionic metal-organic framework nanowire array not only directly grew on Cu foam, but also captured Ni(ii) ions at an ultra-small particle level. The hybrid material exhibited high activity with low overpotential (310 mV at 20 mA cm-2 in 1.0 M KOH solution) toward the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) (1 M KOH), with performance comparable to that of the precious metal benchmark. These findings may expand the field of MOFs for scaled-up water electrolysis.