This study analyses the IMF's role in sub-Saharan foreign debt and structural adjustment issues. A detailed analysis concentrating upon Sudan disproves assumptions about the IMF's capacity to enforce its much-touted, tough policy conditions, and about the inability of defaulting countries to maintain capital inflows, even when in arrears to the IMF itself. The study also examines IMF and World Bank analysis and the efficacy of their policies given the substantial unrecorded foreign exchange inflows and outflows associated with unofficial migrant remittances, the parallel economy and capital flight.