The H3Africa Data & Biospecimens Catalogue at
https://catalog.h3africa.org is the consortium's central index
of:

• Datasets — genotyping, sequencing, phenotype, and other
  data generated by H3Africa studies.
• Biospecimens — sample collections (DNA, plasma, serum,
  etc.) curated by H3Africa biorepositories.

What it gives you:

• Open discovery. Browsing the catalogue does not require
  approval — you can search by disease area, country, sample
  type, data type, etc., and read each study's description.
• A single point of contact per dataset. Each entry lists
  the contributing study's Data Access Committee (DAC) and
  biorepository contact.
• A standardised data-access request workflow. Once you find
  a relevant dataset, you submit a structured request through
  the catalogue itself rather than emailing individual studies.

What it does not give you:

• Direct downloads. Almost all H3Africa data is controlled
  access — discovery is open, but obtaining the data requires
  DAC approval and a Data Access Agreement (DAA).
• Summary allele frequencies — for those, use AGVD
  (https://agvd.afrigen-d.org) which publishes per-region
  allele frequencies without an access request.
• Reference panels for imputation — those are accessed
  through the AfriGen-D Imputation Service at
  https://fedimpute.afrigen-d.org, not the catalogue.

For the access workflow itself, see the next article.

Step 1 — Create a catalogue account.

Go to https://catalog.h3africa.org and sign up. Note that the
catalogue login is separate from the H3ABioNet website
login — you must register specifically on the catalogue site.
You'll receive an activation email after signing up; click the
link to confirm before you can submit a request.

If the activation email doesn't arrive, see the troubleshooting
article on catalogue sign-up issues.

Step 2 — Find the dataset(s) you need.

Browse or search the catalogue. Each dataset has a detail page
describing the study, sample count, consent terms (often tagged
with GA4GH DUO codes), and the responsible DAC.

Step 3 — Submit a data access request.

From the dataset page, start a data access request. You'll be
asked for:

• Principal investigator details and institutional affiliation.
• A short description of the proposed research and how the
  requested data will be used.
• Ethics clearance number / IRB approval (where the consent
  terms require it).
• Any collaborators who will have access (multi-user requests:
  one PI submits, and additional collaborators are listed).

Step 4 — Review by the Data and Biospecimen Access Committee
(DBAC).

DBAC reviews requests against the consent terms of the
originating study. The DBAC also coordinates with the
originating study's local DAC where required.

Review timeline: typically weeks to a few months,
depending on DBAC meeting cadence, complexity of the request,
and whether the originating study's local DAC needs to weigh in.
DBAC reviews are not instant — plan ahead for grant timelines.

Step 5 — After approval: Data Transfer Agreement (DTA).

Once your request is approved, you (or your institution's legal
office) will be sent a DTA to sign before the data is
transferred. The DTA describes the terms of use, the period of
access, and destruction obligations.

Step 6 — Data delivery.

Sequence-level and individual-level data is usually deposited
in EGA (European Genome-phenome Archive). After DBAC approval
and DTA sign-off, you receive credentials to download the data
from EGA.

Status checking. If you've submitted a request and want a
status update, raise a helpdesk ticket in the H3Africa Data
& Biospecimens Catalogue queue with the request reference and
submission date.

Three of the most common catalogue issues, and how to address
them:

1. Activation email never arrived after sign-up.

The catalogue re-sends the activation link every time you try
to log in. Try logging in again with the email you registered
— that triggers a fresh activation email. Check your spam
folder.

If it still doesn't arrive after a couple of retries:

• Confirm you typed your email correctly during sign-up
  (typos in the address are the most common cause).
• Raise a helpdesk ticket in the H3Africa Data & Biospecimens
  Catalogue queue. Include the exact email you signed up
  with. The team can verify on the back end and resend
  manually.

2. 500 Server Error on submitting a data access request.

This has historically been caused by an old, abandoned draft
request in your account (e.g. a draft created years ago and
never completed) that interferes with new submissions.

Resolution:

• Raise a helpdesk ticket with your email and the dataset
  you're trying to request. The team can clear the stale draft
  from the back end.
• After the draft is cleared, restart the data access request
  from scratch.

3. "Page not working" or general loading errors.

• Hard-refresh the page (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + R).
• Try a different browser (catalogue features can occasionally
  break on older browser versions).
• Clear your cache for catalog.h3africa.org.
• If the error persists across browsers, the catalogue itself
  may be temporarily down — raise a ticket so the team can
  check the service status.

What not to do:

• Do not register multiple accounts with different email
  addresses trying to bypass an issue — this creates orphan
  records that the team then has to clean up.
• Do not email individual studies' DACs directly to bypass the
  catalogue workflow — the catalogue is the canonical channel,
  and DACs typically redirect you back to it.