Accelerated Development in sub-Saharan Africa: an Agenda for Action [World Bank 1981] is too important a document to be reviewed or analysed simply in terms of its internal weaknesses and contradictions - though there are a substantial number. To appreciate the full implications of the document, it is essential to consider its general arguments in the context of the current international economic situation. Agreement or disagreement with the Report's general arguments and prescriptions under current circumstances, constitutes the essential backdrop for any sensible discussion of the specifics of the Report. For this reason one may agree with many of the Report's detailed and specific propositions, while nevertheless regarding the document as a whole as fundamentally wrong in its analysis; self-serving in its implicit allocation of responsibility for current problems; misleading in its broad policy prescriptions; and totally unrealistic both with respect to the social and political implications of its 'solutions' and with respect to its assumptions about real aid flws, price and market prospects for African exports and the robustness of Africa's struggling institutional structures.