Globally, countries often view PhD training as building research capacity and may encourage international mobility of potential PhDs as they expect them to return home -- not considering individuals as agents negotiating their own intentions. We examined the interaction between such structural factors and 36 PhD graduates' efforts (from 13 African countries) to negotiate their intentions, particularly around international mobility as they navigated international, national, organisational and day-to-day factors in three periods. Shifts in focus occurred: a) Pre-PhD: international factors around finding a place; b) PhD: host country (national through day-to-day) factors in negotiating a time-limited experience; c) Post-PhD: focus on longer-term, with difference between those returning home and those away (elsewhere in Africa or beyond). Nine trajectories emerged, highlighting the variation in how individuals negotiated asymmetrically within distinct structural factors to advance their careers. Implications for future research as well as policy and practice are explored.