A number of international agencies (as well as other prominent institutions and individuals) have issued reports assessing the “crises” now perceived to afflict “development” in Africa. The Organization of African Unity's Lagos Plan of Action (OAU, 1980) emphasized historical legacies, deteriorating terms of trade, and Africa's dependence on foreign markets, and set out elements for a general strategy to escape these constraints by building self-reliant, local, and regional economies. Various Food and Agriculture Organization documents (e.g., FAO, 1983) and UNICEF's State of the Children Report (UNICEF, 1983) provide particularly grim pictures of food and nutritional deficiencies. The Economic Commission for Africa, in its “silver jubilee report,” analyzing recent history, emphasized that, if present trends continue, the “scenario” after the next twenty-five years will be a “nightmare” of “poverty” and “degradation” of life (UN ECA 1983).

The World Bank's 1981 report, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (hereafter Accelerated Development) also portrayed a “crisis” situation in food and agricultural production and called for some major policy changes in response. This document has probably attracted the lion's share of attention, certainly controversy. There are several reasons why the report deserves careful study and concerned discussion: it is readable, provocative, and comprehensive; it focuses on what are perceived to be “immediate problems” which “must be addressed if the widespread decline in per capita output” is to be “reverse”; it sets out an “agenda” of new “policies and programs to bring about this essential improvement” in the “production base” (World Bank, 1983: 1).