The 35-year-old is an expert at dodging police patrols, but Botswana’s former president wants to put an end to their cat-and-mouse game by legalizing prostitution in hopes of bringing down one of the world’s highest HIV rates.

One in four adults in Botswana has HIV, a rate that has hardly decreased over the last decade, despite the country’s relative prosperity in Africa for its diamond exports.

Botswana does not track the infection rate among sex workers, but southern Africa’s truck routes have long been regarded as a main pathway of the disease’s spread.

“Prostitutes suffer in the hands of some clients who refuse to pay after getting the services or who demand unprotected sex,” Serite said. “It can be really tough in the streets.”

Mogae, former Botswana president and the head of the National AIDS Council, argues that legalizing prostitution would make it easier to help sex workers prevent AIDS.

“Decriminalizing sex work does not mean encouraging it, but it would rather pave way for policies that protect those who have been forced into the trade,” he told a recent council meeting.

Mogae plans to bring his recommendations to cabinet and parliament.

The ruling Botswana Democratic Party, which Mogae once led, has not taken a position on the proposal, while opposition leader Botsalo Ntuane has said he supports the move.

Groups working on fighting AIDS also back the plan, arguing that criminalization of sex work leaves sex workers vulnerable to abuse and HIV infections, and men who seek their services and partners of those men will be in a vicious circle of HIV transmission.

The legal status of prostitution varies from country to country, from being a punishable crime to a regulated profession.

In the US and most Asian and African countries, prostitution is illegal. Since Nov 6, Taiwan has ended penalizing prostitutes and legalized the sex trade in regulated districts.