Malawi Judge OK's Madonna's Adoption

This has been going on for some time. Now this is the completion point," he said.

Madonna and Ritchie have a son, Rocco, 5, and the singer also has a daughter, Lourdes, 9.

On Tuesday, 32-year-old Banda told The Associated Press: "I am the father of David, who has been adopted. I am very very happy he will be very well looked after in America."

He said his wife Marita died a month after David's birth from orphanage in Mchinji, a village near the Zambian border.

Banda said his son left the orphanage on Monday and was taken to the capital, Lilongwe. Madonna has visited the orphanage at least once during her visit. Its director, the Rev.

Thompson John Chipeta, has refused to speak to the media.

Madonna's charity Raising Malawi is setting up an orphanage to provide food, education and shelter for up to 4,000 children. It will have projects based on Kabbalah, Judaism's mystical sect, which counts the 48-year-old singer among its devotees.

Malawi is among the poorest countries in the world, with rampant disease and hunger, aggravated by periodic droughts and crop failure. Some 14 percent 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 orphans.

In an open letter to Madonna released Tuesday, the private for Malawian children, but questioned whether foreign adoptions were in the best interests of children.

Jackie Schoeman, executive director Cotlands, a South African organization that cares for children affected by HIV, said a local family should be the first choice for orphans. In Africa, orphans usually are taken in by extended families, but AIDS has affected many of the people who might have traditionally provided support.

"If the only other option is for them to be in a long-term institution then we would consider international adoption," Schoeman said.