Africa's newest export: Children!

If it wasn’t the truth, it wouldn’t be a partcularly amusing joke. This season’s celebrity must-have item : an African baby!

Having worked in Africa for almost three years and significantly mellowed my views on many issues with the passing of the years, there isn’t much these days that can really outrage me. But this is the only term I can think of to describe the current ongoings on in Malawi. Many commentators have referred to the one yr old child in question as an orphan, ignoring the fact that his father appears to be alive and well and commenting on how happy he is for his son to have a new life in America.

I wholeheartedly agree with one observer who pointed out that “Africa has many problems…family values is not one of them”. A child is seen as the responsibility of all the family and african children routinely grow up with or spend some time being cared for by their extended families (aunts, grandparents, distant cousins) if their immediate family have problems. There are very few circumstances where an African child needs to be adopted and taken to a developed country. Is such adoptions, which is foremost in the minds of those involved: the child’s welfare or the adoptive parents need to adopt?

In my experience most of the time a relative will be more than happy to take in the child if they can support the extra financial burden. Meaning that its very possible and even advisable to help a child by helping a carer with resources and school fees rather than taking the kid. Or course, there is always some danger that the carer will then take the child in just for the money, but I would expect these to be rare cases. There are a few cases where children may be better off adopted outside the country, mainly in the case of health or social stigma problems…but i don’t see the celebs lining up to adopt HIV+ orphans, children of prostitutes or kids who have spent years on the streets, do you?

The possible consequences of more widespread developing country adoptions are very nasty. As a poor family, would you give up your last born to feed the rest of the children? If you were desperate enough, might you even consider concieving a child for montary gain?

We in the West need to be very careful and very cautious in our approach to adoptions in countries over whom we have a very significant economic advantage. If we continue down this path, might we not end up in outsourcing childbaring to africa altogether?