This article addresses two under-theorised subjects in international student mobility (ISM) research: non-Asian students and students in non-traditional study destinations. Drawing upon the notion of 'agency in mobility', I explored African international students' narratives of their enactment of four different forms of agency in China. The findings reveal that they are not 'insufficient', 'lazy' and dumb' populations as essentialised in the existing literature, instead, the participants exhibited high level of agency in response to adversity, study needs and life issues, and their future aspirations. Notwithstanding the same forms of agency displayed in previous 'agency in mobility' research undertaken in the West, I argue that agency performance was entangled with scholarship status; scholarship recipients tended to navigate institutional and social structures with a softer approach. The findings have important implications for higher education institutions to change their practices to enhance China's higher education brand for global competitiveness.