GoKawiilChatGPT collapses Kenya's academic ghostwriting industry, NYT reports
According to the New York Times, thousands of Kenyan workers who once earned income writing essays for foreign college students have seen that business evaporate since ChatGPT launched in 2022. One worker, Teresios Bundi, once earned $40-$70 per paper—far more than his public health training would have paid—but now struggles financially as demand has dried up. At its height, the essay-writing trade employed more than 40,000 people in Nairobi alone.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
This is one of the clearest real-world cases of generative AI displacing an entire labor market rather than just automating tasks within jobs. Experts warn Kenya may be a preview of broader disruption across the global south, where outsourced digital labor has been a key source of income, raising urgent questions about retraining and economic resilience as AI tools improve.
- ChatGPT has largely wiped out Kenya's paid essay-writing industry since 2022.
- Workers who once earned multiples of local professional salaries now face financial hardship.
- Experts view Kenya's experience as an early signal of AI's labor impact in developing economies.
Source: entrepreneur.com — Jon Small, 2026-09-11
Published there as: “AI Has Killed an Entire Industry — People Who Got Paid to Do Homework for College Kids”
Read the original report → The summary and analysis above are GoKawiil's own, written from reporting by the source above. Facts and quotes belong to the original publisher.