AIDS in Africa: The World Bank as 'Sugar Daddy'

When Sandra Tembo walks to the Mbare vegetable market in Harare, Zimbabwe, she passes a billboard: "Your future is brighter without a sugar daddy," it says. Tembo, a 20-year-old dressmaking student, says she's sure her friends "realize the risk" that comes with sugar-daddy relationships, which are common in sub-Saharan Africa and involve girls who have sex with older men in exchange for gifts and cash. "But they say being broke all the time also has its dangers, as you could starve."

Along with prostitution and promiscuity, sugar-daddy arrangements are fueling the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Older men have a far higher prevalence of HIV than their younger cohorts. In Zimbabwe, for example, less than 5 percent of 15- to-19-year-old men test positive for HIV, while that number soars to about 30 percent for 30-to-34-year-olds, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.