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Pop diva Madonna was looking to adopt a young African boy Wednesday while on a trip to inspect a five-million-dollar project she has funded to support Malawi's growing number of AIDS orphans.
A government official said the US singer and actress, who already has two children of her own, may be spared the usual adoption procedures once she has identified the youngster.
"All indications are that she is looking for a boy and she will have to go and look around," Andrina Mchiela, principal sectretary in Malawi's ministry of women and gender, told AFP.
"Madonna wants complete privacy on the adoption process... and we will need to respect that."
Regulations in Malawi usually require prospective adoptive parents to foster a child first and then undergo monitoring for up to two years before the procedure is approved and finalised.
"The government might waive this condition depending on the situation because it is Malawi which will benefit, if it is for the betterment of the child," said Mchiela.
Malawi is home to nearly 1.5 million youngsters who have been left without parents as a result of HIV/AIDS.
The disease afflicts 14.4 percent of the country's 12 million people and has cut life expectancy in the southeast African country to 36. It claims the lives of around 70,000 adults every year.
Madonna has pumped five million dollars into various programmes for vulnerable children in Malawi, including the construction of an orphanage centre in Mchinji, 115 kilometres (72 miles) east of the city of Lilongwe.
Although her visit is private, she was greeted by government officials on her arrival in a private jet and is expected to tour the site of the new orphanage.
In an interview with Time magazine in August, the former "Material Girl", who has reinvented her public image several times, explained her new socially conscious persona.
"Now that I have children and now that I have what I consider to be a better perspective on life, I have felt responsible for the children of the world," Madonna explained.
"I've been doing bits and bobs about it and I suppose I was looking for a big, big project I could sink my teeth into," she said, referring to the project in Malawi.
She said a care centre for orphans in Malawi would "be like a day camp for orphans, who often have relatives who will give them a place to sleep but cannot feed them".
Madonna, a convert to Kabbalah -- an ancient Jewish mystical tradition -- said her new faith had given her a fresh perspective on life.
"One of the main precepts of Kabbalah is that we're put on this earth to help people. And your job is to figure out how you can help and what it is that you can do."
Madonna is already the mother of a six-year-old boy called Rocco with her film-maker husband Guy Ritchie, as well as a daughter, Lourdes, from a previous relationship.
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AFPEntertainment-music-Madonna-Malawi-poverty-AIDS
AFP 042028 GMT 10 06
COPYRIGHT 2006 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.
