BABY David Banda slept peacefully in his cot last night, unaware that he was at the centre of an international row over the adoption of African children by wealthy families in Europe and America.

The 13-month-old infant, whose mother died soon after giving birth, has been adopted by Madonna and her husband, the film producer Guy Richie. and will soon be leaving his village in Malawi to join them.

David’s father, Yohane, has given his blessing. “I am very, very happy because there is poverty in this village and I know he will be very well looked after in America,” he said yesterday. “I know he will be very happy in America.”

As David was moved from the dirt-poor village of Mchinji to Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, international agencies and social workers expressed concern at the latest celebrity adoption and the growing demand for African babies.

Babies have become Africa’s fastest-growing export. By far the world’s poorest continent, it has an estimated 43 million orphans, largely as a result of Aids. Thousands of familes in Europe and America are willing to provide homes and are able to finance the substantial costs of a cross-border adoption. Social workers and Aids activists fear that such adoptions undermine efforts to keep children within communities. They argue that support should be directed towards helping extended families to care for them, not whisking the children off to foreign lands where they often grew up feeling estranged and disoriented.

“International adoptions are not a solution. The answer is supporting the community,” said Bill Philbrick, of the Hope for African Children Initiative, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Haddush Halefom, head of Ethiopia’s child adoption unit, told The Times that the number of foreign adoption agencies based in Addis Ababa, the capital, had grown from four or five to more than a dozen in less than two years. Ethiopia alone has about five million orphans who are now costing more than is spent each year on health or education. “It is a difficult choice,” he said. “Who are we to deny them the chance of an education and better life? Who are we to send them away?” Jackie Schoeman, executive director of Cotlands, a South African organisation that cares for children affected by HIV, said: “For us, first prize is to place the kids locally or even regionally. If the only other option is for them to be in long-term institutional care, then we would consider international adoption.”

Malawi is among the poorest countries in the world, with rampant disease and hunger, aggravated by periodic droughts and crop failure. About 14 per cent of its 12 million people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes Aids, and an estimated 1 million children have been orphaned. In many villages, grandparents or older siblings struggle to feed them.

ADOPTION SOCIETY

Other famous adopters include the actors Meg Ryan, who has a Chinese girl, and Ewan McGregor, who this year adopted a four-year-old Mongolian girl

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