Health research initiatives worldwide are growing in scope and complexity, particularly as they move into the developing world1. The ever increasing activity in health research involving human participants in low and middle income countries (LMICs) has resulted in a greatly increased and increasing need for sound ethical review structures and functions within these countries, and for greatly increased efficiencies in ethical review processes if the full potential benefits of health research are to be realized. Yet both expertise and efficiency are lagging behind as a result of the enormous challenges facing these countries, including poor resource availability, lack of expert capacity and user-friendly information management systems to support the flow of research proposals through the ethics review process. The complexities of research are increasing, hence, the capacity to ethically review research protocols and provide ethical oversight of clinical trials. As part of building research ethics review capacity in Africa, COHRED offers onsite research ethics training courses ranging from basic research ethics issues to advanced topics.