The Shadow Scholars

The Shadow Scholars follows Patricia Kingori, the youngest female black professor in the 925-year history of the University of Oxford. After hearing about a worldwide network of well-educated Kenyans who write essays for Western undergraduates and doctoral students, she travels to Nairobi to find these behind-the-scenes academic writers.

One of them is Mercy, the single mother of an 8-year-old child. She is wobbly on her feet as she explains how she has just spent the night finishing two essays on different subjects. Her name will not appear at the top of the papers.

An estimated 50,000 Kenyans are members of this army of “shadow scholars” hired online to write theses and dissertations. Kenya is home to a high-performance IT industry, and the young generation of Nairobi is well educated, but there are hardly any suitable jobs for them. Writing essays means they can earn a decent living. We also hear from some of their anonymized customers, who struggle with the pressure to perform. While Kingori exposes existing power relations, she wonders who is whose shadow.