Uniforms 'attract African sugar daddies'

Students in Africa have claimed that wearing school uniform is making it easier for HIV-positive "sugar daddies" to seek out young girls.

Sister Emma Banda believes students would be more at risk if they wore their own clothes

Many African men afflicted with the HIV virus believe wrongly that having sex with a virgin will cure them of the disease.

As a result, many young African girls are being targeted by these men - and students on the continent are concerned that being asked to wear school uniform is making them easier to spot.

"Pupils are followed by sugar daddies because we are not HIV positive," one Zambian schoolgirl told BBC World Service's Africa Live! programme.

"They would love to use us, and because of that I don't like our uniforms."

Problem or solution?

Although the problem is concentrated in the southern African region - where the Aids pandemic is at its worst - it is seemingly not unique to it.

"Sometimes the uniform attracts sugar daddies' attention," student Sophia Wangiru, from Menigai High School in Kenya's Rift Valley, stated.

However, she added that she felt that school uniform was as likely to repel predatory men as attract them.

"I don't think we get into [the men] easily," she stressed.

"Uniforms tend to make you think again about what you're going to do."

The word uniform is self-explanatory - it is there to teach children conformity A Booyse, UK Are school uniforms outdated?

In Zambia, government policy insists that all schoolchildren wear uniform unless they attend "open schools" - non-fee-paying schools for the very poor.

One Zambian headteacher told Africa Live! she felt that her students would be more at risk from predatory men if they were allowed to wear what they liked.

"We teach them not to do certain things when they are in uniform," confirmed Sister Emma Banda of Mary Queen of Peace Girls' School in Lusaka.

"When you are in a school uniform it should remind you that you are still in school and you should not indulge in such things."

Sister Banda added that the Mary Queen of Peace school has two uniforms - sky blue or beige dress - and it allowed her students to dress in a "simple style."

She argued that if they wore their own clothes it would be more likely they would dress inappropriately.

"Some girls would come in very tight jeans or all colours of pairs," she said.

"I don't think a T-shirt or a pair of jeans would do as a school uniform."