Madonna has announced plans to build 10 schools in Malawi

Singer announces her Raising Malawi charity will work with new partner to build schools after first project was scrapped last year

Madonna has announced plans to build 10 schools in Malawi with a new partner after mismanagement forced the singer to scrap her first project there last year.

The singer, who has adopted two children from the impoverished southern African nation, said she hoped the schools would educate at least 1,000 children a year, half of them girls.

That is double the number of children she hoped to help with her previously planned academy for girls, which was scrapped in March last year because of mismanagement.

Madonna said her Raising Malawi charity was teaming up with the non-profit group buildOn, which has constructed 54 primary schools in Malawi in the last 19 years.

"I am excited that with the help of buildOn, we can maintain our ongoing commitment to move forward efficiently. We now will be able to serve twice as many children as we would have served with our old approach," Madonna said in a statement.

"I have learned a great deal over the last few years and feel confident that we can reach our goals to educate children in Malawi, especially young girls, in a much more practical way. Constructing smaller schools in partnership with buildOn has restored my faith that we can accomplish what we promised we would," she added.

Madonna's earlier plan to build a state-of-the-art girls school for about 400 children just outside the Malawi capital, Lilongwe, collapsed last year, and the board of her Raising Malawi charity was fired. The New York Times said at the time that $3.8m (£2.4m) had been spent on the school with little to show for it.

The singer has lent $11m to the organisation that she co-founded in 2006.

Malawi has more than 500,000 children orphaned by Aids and is ranked by the UN as one of the world's 20 least developed countries.