I'm going to have another baby, says father of Madonna's adopted son

Yohane Banda, whose 22-month-old son David has been given a new home in London by the pop superstar, has announced that Flora, his second wife, is due to give birth in October.

Speaking outside his tiny mud and thatch hut in the village of Lipunga, 100 miles west of the Malawian capital Lilongwe, the 32-year-old peasant farmer said he hoped for a boy to replace David.

Mr Banda said he is determined to keep the child, despite having placed David in an orphanage after his mother - Mr Banda's first wife Malita - died from childbirth complications at the age of 25.

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There will be a stark contrast between the lives of David and his sibling-to-be. While David lives in a £6million townhouse near London's Marble Arch, dresses in designer clothes and has a nursery filled with expensive toys, his younger brother or sister will have a mud hut for a home with no running water, electricity or sanitation.

Mr Banda hopes the children will meet 'some day in the future' and insists he still has no regrets about letting Madonna adopt his son.

'I am happy for David and his new life,' he said. 'I take everything as God's plan so there is no need to regret. But it would be good if our children recognised each other.' There had been speculation that Mr Banda was reunited with his son in April when Madonna took David on a return trip to the orphanage where she found him - the Home of Hope in Mchinji. But Mr Banda said he had not met either of them.

'It would have been nice to meet David but it was not possible,' he said. 'People at the orphanage only contacted me a day before Madonna left. But one day I will meet David again because Madonna promised to bring him to me after five years.'

The new baby will be Mr Banda's fourth child. The first two died of malaria before their second birthdays, and David was just two weeks old when his father took him to the orphanage after deciding he could not look after him on his own.

Twenty-two-year-old Flora has a two-year-old daughter, Tiyamike, meaning 'let us praise', from a previous marriage. Mr Banda said: 'I hope that God will put his hand on this pregnancy and that both the child and the mother will survive.'

Malawi has one of the worst rates of infant mortality at 79 deaths per 1,000 live births compared with just five in the UK. Two per cent of live births in Malawi result in the death of the mother.

The couple are determined that the baby should not be born at home, as were all three of Mr Banda's other children. They plan to move closer to the district hospital, 40 miles away down a dirt track.

News of the pregnancy comes amid fresh controversy over the fast-track procedure under which Madonna was granted an 'interim adoption' of David last October despite a law prohibiting non-residents adopting Malawian children.

The Malawian Director of Child Welfare, Penston Kilembe, was due to fly to London last week for the first of two home visits to assess how well David is settling in with his new family. The Malawian High Court will use his report to decide whether to allow the 48-year-old singer permanently to adopt David next April.

But, the trip, which had already been delayed by four months, was cancelled at the last minute by Kilembe's boss, the Minister of Gender, Child Welfare and Community Services, Kate Kainja Kaluluma.

Mr Kilembe blamed the latest delay on the intervention of a jealous colleague who 'went behind my back to persuade the Minister that he should travel instead of me'. He said the whole adoption process could be delayed as 'the court cannot proceed until it gets the report'.

'It's not good at all,' he said. 'They [Madonna and husband Guy Ritchie] will be displeased and should be concerned. They know the implications.'

But Maxwell Matwere, executive director of children's charity Eye of the Child, one of a number of Malawian human rights organisations legally challenging the adoption under the umbrella of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, said: "How could the ministry conduct a proper assessment of a child staying in the UK?'

Lawyer for the HRCC, Justin Dzonzi, said Mr Kilembe's report was 'a foregone conclusion' because the ministry wanted the adoption to go ahead. 'They have already decided everything is OK,' he said.