Table 1 Additional qualitative data from respondents

1. Research positions: Landscape for finding jobs to conduct research

 1.1

“Basically its stigma and discrimination on both the health care workers as well as the patients themselves… because you know what,… the fear of … being stigmatised in the clinics or community will actually hamper research…even as a researcher, if you are working in the field [of mental health] you are assumed to also suffer from the issue.”(8, programme Fellow)

 1.2a

“It’s a very fragile pathway. (programme Fellow 4)

 1.2b

“…because of the current socio-economic situation, the university has not been recruiting an optimum number of lecturers. So, I am sure even for those posts that would be available, … it may be difficult for the system to actually absorb all [the] PhD graduates.” (programme Fellow 9)

 1.2c

“And it seems as if it’s mostly academic work or lectureship or lecturing… there isn’t a strict or set out career pathway for someone who would be interested in, in lots of research… (programme Fellow 10)

 1.3

“…it will always be in conflict with my colleagues because people will say, ‘no, he is too busy with research but he is not doing his clinical work,’ and the HR [human resources staff] will be on my neck to say, ‘you were employed as a clinician; what are you doing?’” (programme Fellow 6)

 1.4

“No, l am not aware of part time jobs but actually there is, ah, regulation that you can be hired like for 50% or 70% or 30%, but l don’t think we are using it properly. Maybe people don’t know or we are not encouraging it.” (academic leader 5, Ethiopia)

 1.5a

“I think to start with here may be need to academia and policy makers to work hand in hand to actually develop a national research strategy for MNS” (programme Fellow 9)

 1.5b

“I see the Ministry of Health is really operational and with a lot of service delivery and I don’t think there is much space for research funding within that structure.” (programme Fellow 4)

2. Research skills: developing the necessary skills to get research jobs, with focus on the need for mentorship

 2.1

“How do l build that perimeter of support so that l can train people who can really develop into highly skilled researchers in an African setting with knowledge of artillery resources, with knowledge of working in low income settings, … working with complicated systems or non-existing systems. But the quality has to be good, because they are going to be the generation who will train the next lot, and [so on]” (academic leader 2, South Africa)

 2.2

“Instead of developing the talents that l have as an individual, it’s like, ‘you have to do what l have done because it has worked for me.’ Instead of me spreading my own wings l can’t do that because they are like clipped all the time. ….And most of these other supervisors, it’s like they don’t want you to grow bigger than them.” (programme Fellow 8)

 2.3

“very few people for instance learn how to supervise and be supervised, how to be mentors.” (academic leader 2, South Africa)

 2.4

“l don’t think everybody is cut out to be necessarily a good mentor, l think that supervision and mentoring skills are two different things so sometimes a very highly rated researcher might be excellent in terms of their academic content and strategic inputs but would not have the time or the hours to sit with a student and help mentor them and build capacity and check their analysis and assess them in a really practical level.” (policy maker 1, South Africa)

 2.5

“Advocate, advocate and talk about it and… join it with other areas. Like…for women’s mental health, we can join it with the department of maternal and child health. And for adolescents, it can be family health. You can actually think of mental health in the HIV and AIDS [programmes]. those departments they [the researchers], they find it lucrative….because they get paid somehow.”(programme Fellow 8)

 2.6a

“Even opportunities to travel and disseminate your research findings … because in that case then you are also able to develop other networking partnerships and also learn a lot.” (programme Fellow 5)

 2.6b

“for me I think it was based on the network that I had within [the programme], to also get mentoring from seasoned researchers. …Because …we have had time to interact with more senior researchers..and they have pointed out funding opportunities. And that has then stimulated my interest in also looking for funding opportunities… But I would say the momentum was through the senior [researchers] across the [programme] Consortium. (programme Fellow 9)

3. Funding: discussions about challenges that LMIC researchers face in accessing research funding

 3.1

“It’s amazing to see how they [a UK university] can pull together a team and bring in an extra consultant before you have even got the grant money to help put this huge grant together…” (programme Fellow 4)

 3.2

“if it’s a really small [LMIC] institution, they don’t have the disposable income to be paid in arrears. So they want payment up front, and [we are] very resistant to doing that because of the risks involved.” (programme officer, international funding agency 2)

4. Research commitment from the four African countries: how research is positioned within universities and ministries of health

 4.1

“I think… in country governments have a responsibility to provide a strong university infrastructure through which we can fund great scientists and great science… and then we can then fund those academics to do the science part of their job and not the teaching part of their job.” (international funding agency F4, head of section)

 4.2

“But I think there’s also a lot of local responsibility, um, for building research capacity. Because like you can build the capacity of, you know, one individual to use a really sophisticated, I don’t know, statistical program. But if the university that they’re at doesn’t have a license for it, it doesn’t really make sense.” (international funding agency F1, programme officer,)

 4.3

“But at the same time, we’ve got to make sure, that the stakeholders at both the government and the university levels in-country, are interested in providing that pathway, and working on developing that pathway for the researchers …Because, they’re not going to stay, if it’s not there.” (international funding agency F5, head of section)

 4.4

“I think if our government is serious about research [and] research capacity, they also need to review the size of their funding.” (academic leader 2, South Africa)

 4.5

“I think the lack of dedicated research funding at a local level, I think without having funds dedicated nationally to advance research in any area including mental health then very few people will go into those areas, because then people do not know what the future will be like..” (academic leader 1, Malawi)

 4.6

“Government has set a priority to get 2000 [PhDs]. You have to invest in infrastructure so you recruit people to do PHDs and then if you don’t have the infrastructure you don’t produce quality. So if you just recruit people and give them PHDs that’s not going to help in terms of quality of the training.” (academic leader 5, Ethiopia)

5. Advocacy: perspectives on the connection between research and policy

 5.1

“Because you can’t just go and talk about the national budget, you can’t just go and say, ‘No, no, we should fund mental health.’ They will ask you, ‘Is it a problem? How big is the problem? And why should we worry about the problem?’ So we want to have…facts.” (MOH researcher 2, Malawi)

 5.2a

“l think the researchers do communicate their work, but my issue is more on the messaging: what exactly is being said, how it is being said, how its packaged.” (policy maker 1, South Africa)

 5.2b

“We need to put a human face, we need to explain it using a human story. For instance, a child having epilepsy, seizures, mild fits starting at the age of 2 years. With $1 per day treatment, no [more] fits or seizures. [She] can live a normal life without the attendant stigma, without the attendant loss of school hours and stuff like that. And more importantly, without attendant injuries and other complications of seizure disorder. If you put all those together for 2 years, 3 years how much is that: it’s less than less than $200. I get a child that has less complications, normal IQ, [and] productive [in] society.” (in-country rep for international funder 2, Ethiopia)

 5.3

“l would want a situation whereby right from the beginning when you are putting in your proposal you are actually involving the policy makers.” (programme Fellow 8)

 5.4

“[Research] is now more relevant than it was. When we look at the drafts of the current health sector strategic plan there is a lot more of it now that’s based on national research.” (MOH policy maker 1, Malawi)

 5.5

“We don’t have a lot of resources, we have to choose the interventions which are formed by robust evidence, not just formal expert opinion” (MOH policy maker 4, Malawi)

 5.6

“We managed to use data from a youth depression programme as a way of advocating for the inclusion of mental health into the school health programme.” (MOH policy maker 3, Malawi)

 5.7

“From the different researches [conducted], we finally came up with an alcohol policy which is now at a level for approval. And also… studies done on tobacco…helped us to come up with a strategy.” (policy maker 3, Zimbabwe)

 5.8

“[when] integrating mental health, it was found out that epilepsy was [one of them most common] disorders to be seen at the health centres….So … by availing the necessary drugs, by training the health professionals at health centres, and also making sure that we keep a track of them….this service has been integrated into primary health care in different areas. So, really knowing the magnitude of disease, the burden of disease really..set up policy so that we can … intervene in the right approach.” (policy maker 1, Ethiopia)