AI Displaces Kenyan Gig Workers Who Wrote Essays for Foreign Students
Kenyan freelancers who earned a living writing essays for overseas students have seen their work vanish after AI tools like ChatGPT became widely used.
Kenyan internet freelancers built a lucrative underground market by writing essays and completing assignments for overseas college students, with estimates of up to 40,000 people earning income this way in Nairobi alone. The sector flourished until 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT, prompting students to replace paid writers with free AI tools. As a result, essay-writing orders dried up, rates fell and many related gig jobs—such as transcription and content moderation—also declined.
Former workers like Teresios Bundi, who wrote thousands of papers while studying public health, now earn a modest salary at a German development agency and warn that AI will soon affect other professions. The Kenyan government had previously promoted online outsourcing as a path to jobs, but the AI disruption highlights the fragility of such digital-economy strategies.
