‘The Shadow Scholars’ Director Eloise King on Diving Into the Essay-Writing Industry in Kenya and Using AI to Protect People

Eloise King’s documentary The Shadow Scholars takes a deep dive into a multilayered, complex topic: “a twilight academic industry” that has often been covered only from a very specific perspective. Filmed across three continents, the Film4 movie, being sold by Dogwoof, includes British writer and director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Blitz) among its executive producers.

“When Oxford Professor Patricia Kingori travels to Kenya, she uncovers the murky, multi-billion global underworld of essay-writing,” reads a synopsis. Kingori is not just anyone; she is the youngest female Black professor in the 925-year history of the University of Oxford. “Thousands of young and highly educated Kenyans – overqualified and chronically underemployed – have found lucrative work writing essays for students around the globe who are able and willing to pay for them,” the synopsis continues.

“It’s a complex portrait of an issue that undermines the foundations of a pillar of humanity: education,” said the London festival. The film also contrasts how smart young Kenyans work in an underground economy that supports others’ success abroad while depriving Africans.

The Shadow Scholars, from production firms Lammas Park and White Teeth Films, got its world premiere at the recent BFI London Film Festival where it earned a special mention in the documentary competition. It is now featured in the Frontlight section of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) where it will get its first screening on Sunday.

King recently talked to THR‘s Georg Szalai about her debut feature doc, how she decided to find out about the “shadow scholars,” using AI technology to protect key participants in the film, and xxxx.

The Shadow Scholars taught me some surprising facts and data points, such as estimates that 40,000-plus Kenyans earn their living with essay writing. But it also felt that I learned about the people doing this hard academic work. How important was it for you to also tell this human side?

Absolutely crucial. It’s central to my style of storytelling. I’m really people first, issue second. It’s often a really powerful way to tell any story. Because if you go for a microcosm, or the people who are at the heart, they are often a reflection of the society and the context that we live in.

We were also just incredibly lucky. Patricia Kingori was never going to be in the film. We were making the film as a collaborative partnership for almost two years before she became part of the process, and we’re really glad she did. We shot during COVID, and the first year, we could travel to Kenya. And then in 2021, the travel bans came in, which meant that we couldn’t go to Kenya at all. At that point, I was really worried, but Patricia happened to get the incredible accolade of being the youngest woman of color to be given a full professorship. That rise in her own professional life also gave rise to a confidence. And I said: “I really think that you need to be part of the story. You’ve come from Kenya.” And she really embraced that.

I’m always interested in having a holistic view. So we weren’t interested in just leaving the students out. Having their voices we felt was really important all, and all of the different academics who’d been working in this area. I think that helped to really show just how many people are connected through this web. Hopefully, it then reflects to our audiences that actually we are, in some ways, either complicit or at least allows people to understand the way in which these complex systems implicate all of us and bring us all in.

I have long wanted to travel to Kenya, so seeing Nairobi and the people living there was really interesting to me, especially because it was different from what you sometimes see about Africa.

Having people talk about or sometimes just show us their lives is a really powerful way to understand what’s happening. We see them in their homes, the way they’re working. I didn’t have a different perspective of Kenya or Nairobi. That was the truth of what I was seeing. And so when I compare that to maybe some other depictions of Africa, it feels really different. But I didn’t have to work to give a different representation of those people and their lives, because that’s what was happening.

How did you come away feeling about these super-smart essay writers you met and interviewed on camera? And how did you decide not to try to point fingers a la “these are the good people and those are the bad” people in this underground industry?

It’s this completely sophisticated but unregulated industry. And the more that I understood that, the more I understood that against the backdrop of all of the adversity and the challenges they face, they are the architects of their own financial, economic, and ideological liberation.

In terms of no good guys versus bad guys. Patricia and I, from the beginning, had no interest in vilifying even people in the Global North, such as the students. I think what we were clear about was that there’s a broken social contract for everyone who appears in the film.

How did you first meet the people in Kenya who are featured in the film?

We went on this trip to Kenya, and we essentially met, on the first day, Chege who ended up being in the film. And it was really clear really quickly that not only was he incredible, and the things he was saying were just blowing our minds, for example in terms of the scale of work that they were doing, but he was also the person who opened the door to the community for us. He was a really important conduit for us. Also, as we went through the process, he was the person who would organize these town halls that we would have frequently to elicit feedback.

When we had our first-ever meeting with a number of scholars, they researched us. So when we turned up, they were like: “We know who she is, Professor Patricia Kingori.” She is quite a hero in Kenya. People really respect the work that she’s done. And for myself, they were like: “We’ve seen what you’ve done before, so maybe that will let you tell our story.” And that’s how it began.

I still find myself reading up and researching things mentioned in your film…

Thank you so much for saying that. We put an incredible amount of time and work and research into it. And what we really wanted was this foundation of journalistic and research integrity to do credit to the writers and also Patricia who inhabit this world in a very real way. But I think it just was clear that it wasn’t something that allowed you to have a single thought. Many students go to universities because we’ve been told, “if you go to university, you’ll get a good job and life will be better.” And in America, people are paying and getting into debt. And here, it is increasingly the same.

And I think, for the first time in history, there is a surplus of educated people who can’t get the jobs that we thought that university was going to provide. And so the film hopefully brings people into that understanding that the students who are in Kenya aren’t a million miles away, in some instances, from students who are in the Global North.

Patricia says it in the film: If Kenyans can’t get jobs that are well enough paid and they end up doing work for other people, then what is the value of education? We’re not saying that education is not worth doing. We’re just trying to question some of the ideas about meritocracy. And we really hope that the film prompts people to question who’s really in the shadow here.

It’s that bigger message that we need a broader debate about education…

One of the Kenyan writers, Mercy, talks about it in the film. She was at the top of her class. Especially in Kenya, some of these places are sponsored by churches or others in the community, so when they get to go to university, it’s a really big deal. And to come out of that and to feel that it isn’t being honored I think is also a really big deal.

The protests in Kenya that have been the biggest in many, many years, which are the Gen Z protests, as they’re being called, are exactly about this. One of the things they are complaining about is tax hikes around access to digital media and digital products. So we felt really fortunate to be able to tell the story at this moment. We got contacted by a couple of people who said the film feels like a precursor to what’s happening in Kenya right now. This doesn’t feel like a story that’s just talking about the past. It’s talking about a really future-facing thing, which is: where do all of these educated people who have access to technology go? But also, how could the government do more to support their ambitions and income?

The beginning of the film mentions that it uses AI technology to make sure that essay writers we see and hear from in the film are not easily recognized. Tell me a bit about this decision to use AI for defensive purposes since we so often write about people’s hopes and worries about AI!

AI is obviously part of the story of essay writing insofar as people are trying to use things like ChatGPT instead of the writers. As the film shows, the writers are still having to humanize work. And so the human mind is capable of much more, at this point at least, than ChatGPT. As such, technology feels like this invisible character connecting everyone in the film.

But being able to use technology in order to protect the writers just felt so right. To have the opportunity to do that, and to be able to work so closely with people who are talented enough to make things come to life was really great.

You saw that they were slightly blurred. I hope that having this digital footprint serves as a reminder that not only do these people need to be protected, but also that actually there’s a barrier between us and them. And it’s frustrating that it’s stopping them from being able to really claim the recognition that they deserve.

I think using technology for good is really exciting. Because it’s really easy to be afraid of new and exciting developments, but in this case, it gave us really truthful testimony, and we kept a lot of the emotion, but fundamentally, they were protected. My thoughts about AI are that like maybe with all things, it depends on who’s using it and if they are using it right. If the idea behind it and the intention behind it is to create something that has a positive benefit for society, then that’s an amazing thing.

How important is it for you to bring such authentic stories from Africa to a broader audience?

Telling stories from Africa and across the Black diaspora is really central. The global majority deserves to have stories told that are nuanced and complex and that allow them to see themselves, perhaps, exactly as they see themselves.

We worked so closely with so many production companies in Kenya, which were really supportive of us. For the bits that we did in Kenya, seeking consultation and working really closely with other production teams on the ground, that collaboration was really important. And to your point, that allows the storytelling to feel authentic. I couldn’t tell a story as a Kenyan, because I’m not, but there is the authenticity of allowing people to direct their own narratives within the film and constantly consulting with them about what they thought was important for us to know. What the writers wanted us to know, what Patricia felt was important, what the other academics and the bookshop owner we show thought was important. Hearing all of these different perspectives hopefully allows us to understand that Africa isn’t a monolith. There isn’t one voice. It’s made up of multiple perspectives.

Any future film projects you can talk about yet?

I have started working on another documentary. It’s probably a little bit too early to announce. But I’m excited about it because it’s about archives, music. Again, it’s really about an untold story, but slightly different formally. So I’m quite excited about it.