The World Bank's comprehensive report on subSaharan Africa (SSA), offers both a diagnosis of this area's problems as well as policy suggestions so as to overcome these problems and accelerate growth. This document makes important contributions to the debate on development issues, with special reference to Africa, but it suffers from a number of weaknesses. My criticism will focus on three different levels: a) forecast of the international environment; b) implicit belief in the existence of a coherent, 'correct' body of economic thinking, from which optimum policies can be deduced; c) insufficient consideration of the experience of other countries, which were in the l970s already following policy packages similar to those being recommended by the Report for SSA as a whole. I shall draw, in particular, on the experience of the Southern Cone of Latin America, as countries in this region have pursued with great consistency and determination the type of policies (eg 'opening up') which the Report advocates.