Quick Start — Core Steps

1. Define the question — what do you want to prove or explain? (1–2 sentences)
2. Find data — look for official sources, CSVs, budgets, public records.
3. Clean data — remove duplicates, standardise dates, check for missing values.
4. Analyse — simple counts, trends, and comparisons.
5. Visualise — use charts or maps that match your question.
6. Tell the story — combine visuals with context, sources and methodology.

Estimated time for a short data story: 1–5 days depending on data availability.

Tutorials (Beginner → Intermediate)

• Data Journalism 101 — planning, sourcing, and ethics.
• Cleaning Data — using Google Sheets, Excel and OpenRefine for common tasks.
• Visualisation Essentials — choosing between line, bar, pie, and map visualisations.
• Mapping basics — how to make a simple choropleth using a GeoJSON file and Leaflet.
• Intro to Python for reporters — reading CSVs and producing summary tables with pandas.

Each tutorial includes a step-by-step example and suggested tools to use offline or on low bandwidth.

Tools & Platforms

• Google Sheets / Excel — quick cleaning and pivot tables.
• OpenRefine — powerful for reconciling names and cleaning messy columns.
• Datawrapper — fast, no-code charts and maps for publishing.
• Leaflet + GeoJSON — lightweight mapping for the web.
• QGIS — desktop GIS for advanced spatial analysis.
• GitHub — share datasets and version control for reproducibility.

Where possible, prefer open-source tools to keep costs low.

Ethics & Sourcing

• Always cite the original data source and provide a link or downloadable file when possible.
• Assess the reliability of official statistics — cross-check with multiple sources.
• Protect vulnerable individuals — anonymise personally identifiable information (PII).
• Document your methodology so readers and editors can verify results.

When in doubt, consult with a data editor or legal advisor before publishing sensitive material.

Downloadable Templates

The CSV is a tiny example you can open in any spreadsheet. Use the checklist to keep your reporting consistent.

Mini How‑To: Clean a date column in Google Sheets

1. Open your CSV in Google Sheets.
2. Select the column with dates, click Format → Number → Date.
3. Use =DATEVALUE(A2) to convert text to a date serial if needed.
4. Sort and visually inspect for outliers (e.g., year 1900 or future dates).

// Example: Convert a date text '12/31/2021' in A2 to ISO in B2
=TEXT(DATEVALUE(A2),"yyyy-mm-dd")

Mini How‑To: Simple chart with Chart.js

Paste this snippet into a page that loads Chart.js (CDN) to create a basic bar chart.

<canvas id="chart" width="400" height="200"></canvas>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/chart.js"></script>
<script>
const ctx = document.getElementById('chart');
new Chart(ctx, {
  type: 'bar',
  data: {labels:['2020','2021'],datasets:[{label:'Value',data:[325000,410000]}]},
});
</script>

Suggested Readings & Courses

• Books: “The Data Journalism Handbook” (practical overview)
• Free courses: Introductory modules on data analysis (checked on major MOOC platforms)
• Practice: Reproduce a chart from a public report — it is the best way to learn.

If you would like specific course names or book links, we can add a curated list tailored to West African data sources.

Contribute a Resource

If you are teaching a workshop, have a dataset, or a tutorial that you would like to share with the community, please send a short note and a file to mr.huumar@gmail.com. Contributions are reviewed before publishing.

Include: title, short description, file (CSV/GeoJSON/PDF), and a suggested license (e.g., CC BY).