Despite the rising burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), across Africa, high-quality evidence on the distribution of NCDs and their risk factors remains strikingly scarce. Many global estimates continue to rely on limited empirical data from African countries, and this persistent data gap has led major international research collaborations to underrepresent the continent. This reality highlights an urgent need for granular, context-specific, and methodologically robust data on NCDs and their determinants across Africa.

The African Studies on Ageing and Noncommunicable Disease Epidemiology (ASANDE) initiative responds directly to this need by assembling harmonized, individual-level datasets from African populations, complemented by comparable data from other global regions. With recruitment underway, ASANDE seeks to quantify and compare the associations between major NCD risk factors, including cardiometabolic, behavioral, and environmental determinants, and the incidence and mortality of major NCD outcomes (cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes, and other NCDs) across world regions, with a particular emphasis on disparities between African populations and the rest of the global population.

- Inclusion criteria

We included cross-sectional surveys and longitudinal population-based studies providing individual-level data on established noncommunicable disease (NCD) risk factors, including body-mass index, systolic blood pressure, non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, current smoking status, and diabetes mellitus, together with information on predefined NCD outcomes of interest (including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and other major NCDs). For longitudinal studies, prospective ascertainment of incident events and mortality was required.

- Exclusion criteria

Participants were excluded if they were younger than 18 years at the time of assessment, had missing data on the outcome of interest, had no available information on the exposure variables (NCD risk factors), or, for longitudinal analyses, had a documented history of the respective NCD outcome at baseline.

The ASANDE platform integrates harmonised individual-level data from more than 1 million participants across over 100 countries and six continents, derived from nationally representative cross-sectional surveys and population-based longitudinal cohort studies. Participating studies are organised into major geographical region: Asia; Eastern Europe; North Africa and the Middle East; North and Latin America; Sub-Saharan Africa; and Western Europe, thereby facilitating rigorous regional and inter-regional comparisons. The harmonised dataset provides standardised and comparable information on major noncommunicable disease (NCD) risk factors, including body-mass index, systolic blood pressure, non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, current smoking status, and diabetes mellitus, together with data on major NCD outcomes, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and cause-specific mortality.