African skilled migrants and their circular and return migration strategies have received relatively little attention in the literature, with the previous focus of much African migration literature being on the net loss of skills to countries with developed economies in the global north. This article considers 13 interviews with African skilled migrant academics on topics of migration, networks and language resources. The majority of the participants migrated to major receiving countries and then returned to the African continent to take up employment as academics in South Africa. In the migration trajectories of these African academics, their language expertise, specifically in English as the current global language of academia, is central to their strategies and migrant routes. It emerges that the paths of migration from their home countries (Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Ghana, DRC, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe) are connected to language, resources and networks. African skilled migrant academics are caught, physically and metaphorically between the local, linked to the concept of "village," and the global, linked to the concept of "network" in Castells' terms. In language terms, this implies particular responsibilities for home languages on the one hand and English as a transnational language on the other hand.