disease network in Africa. CONCEPTION OF THE NETWORK Establishing the CKD-Africa Collaboration, by moving the idea of an African network of studies on kidney function and CKD to a functional continental resource, required several steps. These included forming the central structure responsible for initiating and managing the network, identifying research partners, inviting these partners to join the network, and establishing the database platform, by acquiring and processing the participant-level data. Forming the consortium central structure We found it best to balance the central structure with a mixture of highly motivated emerging researchers to drive the initiative, with more senior members to act as advisors (online supplemental addendum A highlights the roles and responsibilities of the core team). In our case, the members of the central structure have had a long-standing working relationship, and we learnt that these shared research interests and mutual trust and support proved beneficial to building a robust and sustainable network. In addition, we found it advantageous to involve a multidisciplinary group of specialists, including nephrologists, epidemiologists, statisticians and public health specialists, given that the catalyst for building this network arose from the recognised need to provide reliable estimates to guide policy. This diverse central structure, along with the other collaborators, are instrumental in shaping the consortium. Identifying collaborators and setting up a functional database platform Building a robust and sustainable collaborative research consortium requires identifying research partners. We found that a good way to identify potential partners was by first tapping into our existing research partnerships. Indeed, as the result of our cumulative existing networks as the central structure, we had access to IPD from crosssectional studies for about 7000 individuals even before the first formal call for participation in the consortium was sent. Also, we found that forging new networks with researchers in the broader field of non-communicable diseases was beneficial. These new networks were mainly established at international conferences and events organised by specialty organisations, such as the European Society of Hypertension, the International Society of Hypertension, the European Renal AssociationEuropean Dialysis and Transplant Association and the International Diabetes Federation. We found that these in-person conversations, at conferences, were often useful when explaining the purpose of the network and discussing complicated issues (eg, security of data storage servers). These conversations also led to the development of personal relationships with our collaborators which we felt eased correspondence throughout the data sharing process. Further research partners were sought through the systematic search of published literature. Search strategy The reference list of the two most recently published systematic reviews of CKD prevalence in Africa3 4 was used as the basis to identify relevant studies, further supplemented by searches of Medline via PubMed, EMBASE, relevant African journals and WHO Global Health Library databases (which included the African Index Medicus, WHO Library Information System, and Scientific Electronic Library Online) to identify more recent publications. This comprehensive search strategy was developed using the African search filter22 and appropriate keywords, including “prevalence”, “incidence”, “screening’, “diagnosis”, “risk prediction”, “chronic kidney (or renal) disease’, “kidney (or renal) dysfunction”, “decreased kidney (renal) function”, “end-stage renal disease”, “glomerular filtration rate”, “albuminuria”, “proteinuria” “Cockcroft-Gault equation”, “Modification on July 8, 2022 by guest. Protected by copyright. http://gh.bmj.com/ BMJ Glob Health: first published as 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006454 on 4 August 2021. Downloaded from George C, et al. BMJ Global Health 2021;6:e006454. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006454 3 BMJ Global Health of Diet in Renal Disease equation”, “CKD Epidemiology Collaboration equation”, strung together by MeSH terms. Additional citations were also searched by scanning the reference lists of review papers and conference proceedings. Thus, to date, the searches covers the time frame from 1 January 1995 to 31 January 2021. The search results were uploaded into the citation management database EndNote (Clarivate Analytics, Philadelphia, USA), and the duplicate check function used to identify citations retrieved from multiple sources. Unique citations were uploaded into the systematic review software, Covidence (Covidence, Melbourne, Australia), used to store and track search results in the review process. Process for selection of eligible studies Using the Covidence software, two team members of the core working group (CG and SS) independently reviewed the articles referenced in the published systematic reviews3 4 and those obtained through the systematic search processes. In instances where either team member determined that a study may be eligible based on the title or abstract review, a full-text article review was conducted. Disagreements between reviewers, after full-text review, was resolved by discussion and consensus. There was no restriction on language since translators were available, if needed,