Such were the Conditions: The Kahnplay Incident is a richly packed memoir motivated by Africa's poverty conundrum. It offers ground-level front-row views of African development as it navigates through around and over obstacles-harrowing overwhelming and heart wrenching-faced by a young Ghanaian determined to fulfil the promise of independence in the aftermath of truncated development: through war coups geopolitics corruption and misguided donor conditionalities.