This article combines large-scale bibliometric analysis of publications on education by researchers based in sub-Saharan Africa with researchers’ accounts of their priorities and practice. Patterns in the thematic foci of the research from 48 countries in the region are considered from the perspective of international policy statements (the Education Sustainable Development Goal and the African Union’s Agenda 2063), alongside analysis of funding, co-authorship and citations. We find a large number of publications by these scholars in reputable journals which merit greater scholarly engagement. Furthermore, evidence presented in this paper challenges claims about the dominance of Northern research agendas in sub-Saharan Africa.