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Researchers of forced migration in Africa have largely appropriated, as a primary analytical approach, categories developed in refugee agency policy, resulting in policy-driven scholarship that obscures local and historical patterns of refuge-seeking and displacement. Contra this Eurocentric approach, empirical research conceived independently of dominant policy categories emphasizes shared commonalities of settled and displaced populations, such as language, identity, gender, economic status, occupation, political allegiance, and historical migration processes. Such findings can develop new understandings of forced migration in Africa, where many of those displaced remain outside organizational systems of protection, aid and support. Yet mobilizing empirical research produced in Africa remains a challenge. A 2020 study led by the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network found that scholars based in the Global North produced 90% of articles published in the flagship Journal of Refugee Studies---despite 85% of the forcibly displaced being located in the Global South.