Diery Seck, PhD, Head of Center for Research on Political Economy, Dakar, Senegal; d.seck@crepol.org

The article discovers challenges observed today in the sphere of development assistance to the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The author describes unfavourable initial conditions the SSA countries facing currently in their socio-economic development, such as the rising social demands and impossibility to address them at national level, a high number of land-locked counties within the region affecting and limiting the SSA countries human and economic development opportunities and others. Along with the analysis of the unfavourable conditions for social and economic development of the region the author turns to main shortages of the development assistance programmes currently implemented at the regional level in order to provide recommendations on their improvement by establishing new development finance architecture of Sub-Saharan Africa.