Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters

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Most young women, she says, are not aware of the dangers. "Some of the girls who disappear around our continent were in these transactional relationships… Looking at the police reports, these are cases of girls who were in relationships with older people, and they were rejected at some point and someone decided to kill them."

What is wrong about sex anyway?" asks Jane. "People just make it sound wrong. But sometimes, it ain't wrong at all." There has been a rising growth of the women's movement in Africa and a rising feminist consciousness," says Oyunga Pala, the Nairobi columnist. "Women who were vilified for being sexually active have been given license to just be. There is less slut-shaming than before."

Grace, the aspiring singer struggling to put food on the table, has a slightly different perspective - to her the similarities with sex work are more apparent. Grace, a 25-year-old single mum from northern Nairobi, has a regular sponsor, but is actively seeking a more lucrative relationship with a man who will invest in her career as a singer. Among them are the stars of the reality TV show Nairobi Diaries, Kenya's own blend of Keeping up with the Kardashians and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. The show has launched several socialites out of Nairobi's slums and on to yachts off the coast of Malibu or the Mediterranean. Dr Joyce Wamoyi from the National Institute for Medical Research in Tanzania says girls and young women between the ages of 15 and 24 have consistently been at higher risk of HIV infection than any other section of the population in sub-Saharan Africa.

Among Kenyan feminists, the rise of sponsor culture has provoked intense debate. Does the breaking of old taboos around sex represent a form of female empowerment? Or is sponsor culture just another way in which the female body can be auctioned for the pleasure of men? But as most of those dependent on sugar relationships are female, they have dominated the public debate. There are concerns about the morality of their lifestyle, but also about its consequences for their health. The artist Michael Soi notes that Kenya remains on the surface a religious society with traditional sexual mores - but only on the surface. Those who deplore sex before marriage and infidelity within marriage rarely practise what they preach, he argues, and the condemnation of sugar relationships is tainted by the same hypocrisy. George Paul Meiu, who studies transactional relationships between men of Kenya's Samburu tribe and older European women, has described how their youth and good looks have become valuable commodities in Kenya's beach resorts. Jane, the student, makes a distinction, arguing that "in these relationships, things are done on your terms", and Dr Kirsten Stoebenau, a social scientist who has researched transactional sex in Kenya, agrees that this is significant.

Until recently there was no data to indicate how many young Kenyan women are involved in sugar relationships. But this year the Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics conducted a study for BBC Africa in which they questioned 252 female university students between the ages of 18 and 24. They found that approximately 20% of the young women who participated in the research has or has had a "sponsor." Transactional sex was once driven by poverty, says film-maker Nyasha Kadandara. But now, increasingly, it's driven by vanity. A look at the Kenyan tabloids also suggests that women are at risk of violence from their sponsors. Both Alfred and her other sponsor, James, prefer not to use condoms, she says. In fact she has had unprotected sex with multiple sugar daddies, who then have sex with other women, as well as with their wives, exposing all of these partners to the risk of sexually transmitted diseases.