Fake essays: What I learned meeting Kenya’s shadow scholars

From an early age, Patricia Kingori believed that education was the ticket to a good life. But after moving to the UK from St Kitts when she was 10, she quickly learned that good grades were not enough. Success depended on your skills being recognised – and people in power giving you their support. So when a teacher told Patricia she would never make it as a sociologist, her mother made her promise to study sociology anyway and learn about how power is exerted over ordinary people. Patricia did just that, and was eventually awarded a professorship at the University of Oxford. It was while in Oxford that she attended a lunchtime talk that taught her a shocking fact – that there's a billion dollar industry where Kenyan shadow scholars write hundreds of thousands of essays each year, just so students in the Global North can take the credit. She decided to go to Nairobi to meet the people behind the essays and find out what it means to be in the shadows. But it also raised conflicting emotions for Patricia, who had experienced her own ideas being taken without credit, and made her think again about who we judge to be the brightest and the best.

Patricia's investigation was followed for a Channel 4 documentary called The Shadow Scholars: Fake Essay Scandal.

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar
Producer: Anna Lacey

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Photo: Patricia Kingori is wearing a bright pink silk blouse with the collar undone and black trousers. She is standing and casually leaning her right elbow onto a metal railing. In the background are modern buildings with glass walls, which are all slightly out of focus, and the sun is shining. Credit: Patricia Kingori)