Accra — Kenya and Tanzania have been cited as some of the Africans countries where a multiplicity of ICT projects costing millions of dollars have been going on without registering significant results in the welfare of poor Africans.

Most of these projects are going on without their impact being assessed, said Juma Msenge from Tanzania, an information expert who has worked with several donor agencies.

According to Mr Alain Clerc, Digital Solidarity Fund for ICTs Executive Secretary, one of the problems facing Africa is the failure of the donated money trickling down to those who need it.

Speaking at African preparatory conference for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Accra, Ghana, added that recent studies show that over 65 percent of the money donated for causes like ICT development does not get to the people who really need it.

Some donors at the meeting privately complained that those who are given the money to implement projects in Africa instead line their pockets first before thinking of the project.

Or at times the money does not even trickle down to developing countries from donor organizations that raise it in developed countries.

Equally shocking was the revealation by donors at that over 70 percent of ICT project proposals submitted to them are not from African countries such as Kenya.

But from individuals and organization in the developed countries who say they want to help fix problems in Africa.

"About 90 percent of the project proposals I receive on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Africa, come from other countries except from Africa," said Mr Pietro Sicuro, the Director of Organization Internationale de la Francophone, which funds many ICT projects in Africa.

Everybody thinks he or she can help Africa, but African countries seem not do think they can help themselves, he added in his speech made at the conference in Accra, Ghana.

As a result, many projects started in countries like Kenya fall short of expectations, as there is no ownership and those who undertake them on behalf of African countries do not have the continent's welfare at heart.

Several key speakers at the conference expressed anxiety about the lack of Africa's vision and interest in driving its own agenda.

Mr Pierre Dandjinou, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Africa region adviser on ICTs, said he fears that Africa is not taking charge of its destiny to appoint that it has now become a project that never succeeds.

"Africa continent has been turned into a project, where projects are started, huge sums of money invested, then they are either abandoned or if completed, not sustained. Nothing seems to be done to its conclusiveness."

Participants at the Accra meeting said the donor-recipient relationship should change and the donors need to listen more and do things the way African countries want them to be done.

Donors were also blamed for not coordinating their activities, ending up funding one organization for a project that has already been funded by other three or five donors.

Most of these is said to benefit individuals. Consequently, one of the recommendations by African participants at the Accra meeting is for the donors to, in an elaborate way, coordinate the way they fund projects.

Meanwhile, Internet firms located in developed countries are said to be reaping from Africa's disorganization.

More than 500 million US dollars is said to paid by African countries to these Internet firms every year, for them to reroute messages from one African country to another.

A message from Kenya to Uganda, for instance, goes first to Britain before it is rerouted to Uganda.