African adoptions drop as economic crisis bites

African adoptions drop as economic crisis bites

International adoptions by Americans have decreased sharply due to the economic crisis and increased regulation imposed after high-profile celebrity cases, agency officials said.

Angelina Jolie and her adopted daughter Zahara, who was originally from Ethiopia Photo: GETTY

By Mike Pflanz, Nairobi 9:00PM GMT 25 Mar 2011

In 2004, American families adopted almost 23,000 children from around the world, but by 2010 that figure had more than halved to 11,058, according to US State Department figures.

"We have stopped organising adoptions for overseas clients because it was just too hard to find good families," said Leah Kigutha, director of Maji Mzuri Children's Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

A surge in enquiries up to 2010 "attributed to publicity surrounding Madonna's case" had stalled as increased legislation governing adoptions was discussed by the US authorities, Ms Kigutha said.

The Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption entered into force in the US in early 2008, at the same time as Madonna's case to adopt David Banda, a Malawian toddler, was bogged down in a Lilongwe court.

Angelina Jolie had earlier adopted an Ethiopian girl, Zahara, in 2005, and had given birth to a natural daughter, Shiloh, in Namibia, in 2006.

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But it was Madonna's alleged circumventing of Malawi's regulations on adoption which demanded that a prospective parent live in the country for a year before adopting which raised hackles.

"So much changed at that time," said a British aid worker living in Nairobi who battled for three years to adopt a Kenyan orphan. She would not give her name to protect her son's identity.

"We had been jumping through bureaucratic hoops up until then, but we thought we were making progress. After the whole Madonna thing, everyone just became supersensitive about foreigners adopting African kids."

Statistics on adoptions from Kenya were not immediately available.

But the US State Department shows one African country which is bucking the downward trend.

Ethiopia last year remained the second most popular country for international adoptions to the US, after China, with 2,511 children starting new lives with American parents.

This was up from 2,275 the year before, and from just 284 in 2004, according to the State Department website.

"With or without Angelina and Brad, the world knows that there's an awful crisis of abandoned children here," said one adoption agency director in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital.

"We must hope that kind people keep coming here because the problem is still very much too large without them."