This research explores the changing impacts and quality of African scientific publications and provides an assessment of the contribution of African science to the SDGs. Overall, the continent has recorded an improvement in the quality of scientific publications in the last fifteen years. Likewise African scientific production, these changes have remained critically heterogeneous and polarized around a few usual suspects. Nonetheless, in-depth explorations suggest that this pattern does not hold true when focusing on field-level performances, such as what could be observed for the agriculture- and health related publications of Africa-based researchers. Moreover, the SDG prevalence can differ much at the country and SDG levels, also depending on the impact metrics employed. Furthermore, different methods, including the selected SDGs terms, can affect both the results and the related interpretations about the preparedness of the continent for addressing developmental challenges through science.