The audience might have wished it was merely a catchy tune, but beneath the rhythm lay a reflection of modern-day relationships— those involving sugar daddies, also known as mubabas in Kenya.
The song echoed a reality that many women in their 20s and 30s today seem to embrace, where relationships are not just about romance, but about material gain.
“Nimekam na mubaba, mfadhili. Juu nakuwanga na allergy ya umasikini. Napenda good life, napenda fine things. Love bila pesa si tamu ni pilipili. Heri nipate heartbreak Dubai. Nikiwa kwa ma yacht na ma-champagne mi hudai. Ah than a fly guy, kutoka Githurai ..... ”
Translates to: “I’ve come with a sugar daddy. Because I’m allergic to poverty. I love the good life and fine things. Love without money isn’t sweet; it’s pepper, I’d rather suffer heartbreak in Dubai, while on yachts and sipping champagne than be with a fly guy from Githurai, bragging about his manhood but with empty pockets…”
That was content creator Diana Bahati’s opening verse in her 2022 song, ‘Mubaba’.
Sugar dating in Nairobi: Why younger women want older wealthy men
While this may seem like an anthem of a generation that has normalised sugar daddies, it is not a new phenomenon. Them Mushrooms, a musical band that was famous in the 80s, sang ‘Unkula Huu’ about a young man who was dumped because of a sugar daddy.
However, what is different now is that the world in which these relationships thrive has expanded beyond Kenya, fuelled by Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms. Young women today not only indulge in the company of mubabas but also flaunt it, inviting the world into their lives of yachts, champagne, and luxury cars—all bought by these older, wealthy men.
This scenario could be going on quietly, because it is an act between consenting adults, but once in a while it bubbles out of the private rooms and becomes top news. Often, it involves a young woman being killed due to a misunderstanding with her mubaba . At other times, it is a hapless mubaba who dies in the throes of ecstasy and logs out of the world with something of a happy exit.
But it also a growing concern because sugar daddies are altering the dating and family scenes and leaving younger men raging at the ease with which they are having under their spell, girls just breaking into adulthood.
For young men, the emergence of older men using wealth to court young women has tilted the romantic playing field, leaving them feeling outmatched and frustrated.
In 2018, a study by Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics, in which they interviewed 252 female university students between the ages of 18 and 24, found that approximately 20 percent of the young women who participated in the research had or had had a “sponsor”. Another study conducted by A Well Told Story in 2016 found that 65 percent of Kenyan youth believed there was no problem with having a “sponsor.”
“It hurts us,” Anderson Kalu*, a fourth-year student at Masinde Muliro University, tells Nation Lifestyle.
“When you’re going up against someone who is loaded, you’re already on the losing side. How do you compete? You’ll be there, talking about love, and the next minute, your girl gets picked up in a fancy car by her mubaba .”
In his analysis, the culture thrives because “there is hunger in university,” which means more expenses than the money available.
For many young men like Anderson, the introduction of a sugar daddy into a relationship is a deal-breaker.
“You can always tell when it happens,” he says, “a girl who was once struggling suddenly starts dressing sharply, showing off expensive gifts, and taking photos with high-end whiskies—things that don’t fit her normal lifestyle. That’s when you know there’s a mubaba in the picture.”
A girl who was once struggling suddenly starts dressing sharply, showing off expensive gifts, and taking photos with high-end whiskies—things that don’t fit her normal lifestyle.
Photo credit: Pool
“It is a big contributor. It has misled many. I was once dating, and everything was flowing fine. I would occasionally send her money to buy food, and she would be happy. Then it reached a point where she told me, ‘Oh, I’m a girl, this money isn’t enough, I think we should break up.’ So, from my instinct, I knew someone was sending more money.”
Anderson’s experience is not unique. Michael Amiani*, a third-year student at the University of Nairobi, often witnesses young female students being chauffeured out of campus by older, affluent men.
“Our campus borders Kilimani estate, where the well-to-do live. As a young guy without much money, how do you even sustain a relationship in this environment? It pains you to see their statuses [social media posts depicting a lavish lifestyle]. You have to mute that status because you don’t want to see it,” he says.
“We’re expected to date between 23 and 27 before thinking about marriage, but with these older men taking all the girls, it feels like there’s no one left for us. It becomes hard for us to go through the crucial dating stage before we marry,” he says.
One potential solution to the mubaba culture, according to Anderson and Michael, is increased parental support. They argue that if parents were more financially supportive of their daughters, there would be less temptation for young women to seek out sugar daddies.
Anderson says, “This is mostly caused by the greed for money. If parents covered all the expenses, the girls wouldn’t have to turn to mubabas for help.”
Onesmus Masila*, a third-year student at Kabarak University, shares similar views. He points out that on Friday evenings, their campus parking lot has several high-end vehicles that no student could afford, hinting at the sugar daddy culture at play.
“It is not fair. They have money. We, as young men don’t have money. You send your girlfriend Sh1,000 while someone is sending her Sh5,000. You can’t compete. On a Friday night, you witness your girlfriend being taken, then you spot V8s and other vehicles that don’t often use that route, and you know someone is being brought back on Monday morning or Sunday evening. You can’t compete. So, you let it go,” he tells Nation Lifestyle .
Technology has added another layer to this dynamic, making it even easier for young women to connect with sugar daddies.
There are the likes of Craigslist and OKCupid, where the hunt happens.
Posts on these platforms often emphasise that the relationship is strictly business: the woman provides companionship, and the sugar daddy offers financial support.
Technology has added another layer to this dynamic, making it even easier for young women to connect with sugar daddies.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
Nation Lifestyle sampled Craigslist, one of the online platforms where young women seek wealthy men out for a good time in exchange for money. Equally, older men looking for younger women are here — and the posts are anonymised.
“I am looking for a regular. Though I’d prefer a college girl, it’s not a must. I have a house, which I go to for some peace and quiet. You can stay there or I let you have a key to a space you can come to give me full service,” one man wrote.
Another post read: “Lady here seeking a mature gentleman for a regular, long-term arrangement/affair. I am in my mid-20s.”
“I’m hoping for a discreet long-term arrangement regularly,” she added.
OKCupid, another match-up platform, has a blog in which they publish information about their users. One blog post is about the preferred age of the person being sought for a date. The graph shows that no matter their age, women are looking for men who are about five years younger or older than they are.
The graph for men shows that no matter their age, they are looking for women who are aged between 18 and 25.
Sugar dating, also called sugaring, a relationship wherein a moneyed person dates a less moneyed person, may be as old as the hills, but the trend has gained popularity in the social media and the Yolo [you-only-live-once] era.
Sandra Pendo* is in her late 20s. She is a pretty girl with a pointed face and dark braided hair. A newly-employed nurse, she tells Nation Lifestyle that she has not one, but three mubabas . They range between 50 and 60 years old.
“I started seeing my mubabas when I found out my boyfriend was cheating on me,” she says. “I have three, and I see them every weekend.”
She says the mubabas pick her up on Friday after work — not simultaneously; each has his own day, for a few hours.
When meeting up with the older men, sometimes she lies to her boyfriend, whom she has dated for two years, that she is working late.
“Being a nurse makes the lie believable. I switch off my phone for a while,” she says.
Sandra is unassuming, but her eyes have a certain calculative coldness about them, and she speaks with the kind of alacrity that betrays a hardened criminal, one imprisoned not by the law, but by love. She says she is living life on her terms. She makes it fun, she makes it fit her needs.
“Mostly in clubs on the outskirts of the city. Sometimes we pay for a room there, sometimes we come back to my place, but rarely,” she says.
After the meet-up, the mubaba gives her between Sh5,000 and Sh10,000.
Some good weekends, she says, she makes up to Sh30,000. In addition to what she earns as a nurse, the mubaba money has given her a leg up financially, if she was to compare herself with her peers solely relying on one job.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. And so, does she have unprotected sex with these men?
“Most of these older men insist on protection,” she says, “they don’t want you to get pregnant and ruin their marriages. No one wants to start raising another baby at their age. But I have another man, whom I want to marry. We’ve been on and off for some time. He has good genes and can make a great father. Plus, he has a better job and is more stable. He is in a relationship with someone else, but I know he will be back.”
Sugar daddies are altering the dating and family scenes.
Photo credit: Photo I Pool
Then there is Rosa Nadia*, a 22-year-old. She meets sugar daddies at her workplace. She works as a stripper in one of the red-light districts in Nairobi’s Kilimani. She has been in the business of stripping for a little over a year and has a three-year-old son who lives with her mother in Nakuru.
She has a diploma in something, she says, but that is about it.
“I prefer having the freedom to be with any man I want. Men out here cheat on their wives. Some of these mubabas want to tie me down. They want a relationship, but I always send them back home. I am not interested. This is purely transactional for me,” she says.
From a sociologist’s point of view, Dr Roselyter Riang’a, an assistant professor at Aga Khan University Medical College, notes that the mubaba phenomenon is driven by both men and women seeking to fulfil certain societal expectations.
For the men, one factor is the desire to appear that they still “have it”.
“Sometimes, these wababas want to retain their gender dominance. There is an age where these wababas feel like they are losing their beauty and attraction in society,” she says.
As for the younger women, she observes that theirs is a “pragmatic response to limited economic opportunities, the rising living costs, and the desire for upward mobility”.
“She wants to go live in Runda [one of Kenya’s most expensive estates] at the earliest opportunity. So, because society is not favouring this girl to generate income for herself, she finds it a shorter, faster and quicker way of upward mobility, and to acquire social status,” she says.
Dr Riang’a also believes that society has glorified the “mubaba” word, thanks largely to social media, and made the man in such an arrangement sort of a hero when he is not.
Another major factor, she says, that is fuelling the phenomenon where young women are clamouring for older men is the economic disparities in society.
“[There are] claims that the country is bankrupt, yet you can see the mubabas making a lot of money, which is affecting the younger men’s ability to get jobs,” she says.
“It’s not that these girls are attracted to the mubabas . It is the money that is attracting them. So, in other words, our society is economically unfair. The systems are accelerating the economic disparities,” she adds. “The system is favouring those who already have money, at the expense of the young men.”
In Dr Riang’a’s view, any young woman entertaining a sugar daddy is on the wrong path.
“One thing she needs to know is that this mubaba does not really need her. He is using her as an item to defend his masculinity and image in society. The mubaba has his family. You know that wealth has been built over the years with the other family members, of which her assurance of retaining those things is not really sustainable,” she says.
“We’ve seen cases where, when the mubabas die, the girl goes back to the streets because the man’s family completely locks her out. So, these are just temporary, short-term things that are not sustainable. By the time her eyes open for her to realise that she needs her own assets, it is too late to start,” says Dr Riang’a.
In her view, the rise of the mubaba culture is not only distorting the dating landscape but also eroding the foundations of family and society at large.
