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BLANTYRE—Officials in Malawi insisted on Thursday that pop star Madonna was going to adopt a local child but acknowledged tension with the visiting singer, who denies having chosen an orphan boy.
"Madonna's people asked us to identify 12 children aged one and the ministry of women and child development has done (that) and what I know so far is that she identified one child yesterday," said Minister of Information Patricia Kaliati.
A spokeswoman for Madonna on Wednesday denied that the diva had adopted a baby boy from an orphanage shortly after arriving in Malawi this week or that she had asked government officials to assist in an adoption.
Amid the confusion, Henry Chimunthu Banda, Malawi's minister of energy, mines and natural resources, said the government would say nothing more until he met the 48-year-old star on behalf of the Malawian president on Friday.
"The earlier statements by government have caused some concerns from the Madonna camp in Malawi," Banda, a senior minister, told Reuters when asked about the differing accounts of the singer's reported adoption plan.
Reporters in Malawi have had no access to the pop star or her entourage since they arrived in Malawi in a private jet.
Madonna's trip has stoked high expectations among Malawi's poverty-stricken 13 million people, who are dependent on tobacco exports for economic survival.
Madonna has said she plans to spend at least $3 million on programs to support orphans in Malawi and another $1 million to fund a documentary about the plight of children in the country.
Madonna, who is the mother of two children, on Wednesday traveled to a village 12 miles outside the capital Lilongwe, where she is funding the construction of a center to feed and educate about 1,000 orphans.
On Thursday she and her husband, British filmmaker Guy Ritchie, visited an orphanage outside the country's business capital Blantyre, in southern Malawi. She did not talk to the press. —Agencies