"This guide follows a regional conference hosted by FAIR during September 2012 in Nairobi (Kenya) where more than 40 journalists, editors and media representatives discussed issues around ‘War on Terror in East Africa: security, elections and transparency. The programme also combined regional case study presentations with technical skills training. Ron Nixon (New York Times and founder of the Ujima project) provided insight on ‘how to follow government spending through public information’. His session demonstrated there is a lot of data about African state spending freely available on the internet, such as US department databases, service contracts, legal documents and US aid agency websites. Although termed ‘classified’ by some Ministries, data on government programmes can be obtained via the US Freedom of Information Act, for example. The selection of websites and documents presented by Ron Nixon at the Nairobi workshop, and also contained in this guide, is meant to enable investigative journalists to dig deeper using various tools and sources without getting into trouble. The ultimate objective is to show how data from external sources can be used by African journalists to expose forms of secret lobbying and foreign aid that do not help development." (Foreword)