The Shadow Scholars

If you’ve studied at college or university, or even the later years of high school, at any time this century, the chances are that you’ve come across people offering to write your essays for you in exchange for a cash fee. This kind of academic fraud is disturbingly commonplace, and yet for all the focus on people who choose to cheat, we rarely hear anything about the people behind the scenes who are actually doing the work. Their industry is centred in Kenya, with 40,000 people employed this way in Nairobi alone. In this documentary, sociologist Patricia Kingori and filmmaker Eloïse King tell their story.

It’s not a line of work that many people imagine themselves getting into, but it’s a practical way to make use of academic skills which are generally undervalued in the jobs market if one can’t afford to sign up for a degree at a prestigious university. The option of doing it from home makes it practical for parents and carers. They mostly use pictures of smiling young white people when advertising their wares. One of them – his real face disguised using AI – explains that he writes for students at Oxford, and was previously the ghostwriter for a famous influencer. Another, illustrating the remarkable toughness we see in many, explains how she managed to do her own degree exam whilst her waters were breaking. She now has a seven-year-old daughter who dreams of becoming a doctor. Perhaps, with the money she makes from getting other people degrees, she can make the child’s dream come true.

None of these people have much hope for their own dreams. The longer we spend with them, the harder it is to see them as criminals. King provides a brief history of Kenya’s emergence from colonialism, but even before that, viewers will not find it difficult to discern the power dynamics at play. One scholar explains that if their own work were recognised, they would have the equivalent of nine degrees – but they can’t afford to prove their skill, and have no chance of getting the kind of high level job that the people who hire them will walk into.

An estimated 37 million students, worldwide, are cheating in this way. The film focuses on those in engineering and the sciences, but reference is made to other fields. To the ones who stay in academia and, despite having no real proven ability, end up writing medical papers that people’s lives could depend on. To the ones who go on, having had no real training, to become doctors or take on similar safety-critical roles. Still, King hesitates to condemn the students. We see interviews with a couple of them. Young people pushed way beyond their abilities by ambitious parents, expecting to be hated if they fail; or the recipients of all their parents’ savings, poured into giving them opportunities that they simply don’t feel capable of using. Are they and the shadow scholars all, ultimately, victims of the same system?

We learn about the social and legal measures used to try to bring this kind of collaboration to an end. About International Day of Action Against Contract Cheating, and about the potential for extortion should contracts not be approached in good faith. We look back at the traditional European idea of education as the panacea for Africa’s problems, and what the really means in an economic situation like the one we have. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, in one of his final interviews, describes the practice as akin to slavery. Elsewhere it is described as an African solutions to a Western problem.

We learn, also, about the impact of large language models, or ‘AI’. Will this replace the shadow scholar industry? What could that mean for Kenya’s economy, and for all those highly skilled people with no other opportunities? The film is sharp throughout and powerfully predictive, yet the situation remains very much in flux, and you will likely experience this film very differently depending on when you see it.

King and Kingori have both had personal experiences which give them insights into the subject matter. These remind us of how hard past generations have worked to help their children advance, and the pressure to succeed that comes from that; as well as how difficult it still is for Black women to assert themselves within academia, which can be exploitative in a number of ways. The documentary depicts a system in which success still has more to do with birth circumstances than merit – and yet it is in itself an accomplishment deserving of serious attention. At each point when one might think that the key to this fascinating subject has been found, another door is opened, leading to yet more unexplored angles. Screened as part of Docs Ireland 2025, it is quite simply one of the best films of the year.

Reviewed on: 16 Jul 2025