The World Wide Web Foundation was established in 2009 by Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee to advance the open Web as a public good and a basic right. It is building a future in which the Web empowers everyone, everywhere, to take part in building a fairer world.

The Web Foundation blends powerful advocacy, cutting-edge research, and practical innovation to build a better Web for all. It works in partnership with over 160 organisations, in 70 countries, affecting over 2 billion people. In the past two years, its efforts have changed policies and practices for the better in more than 10 countries, and helped hundreds of thousands of ordinary Web users everywhere to have their voices heard.

The Web Foundation focuses on three key dimensions of human rights online:

  1. Expanding Access: Working to expand access to the Web for over half of the world’s people who are still not connected

  2. Defending Digital Rights: Fighting to ensure that everyone’s voices can be heard online, and that the Web serves people, not governments or corporations

  3. Democratising information: Innovating to make knowledge and data freely accessible to all online through open data

Priorities as a partner of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data

To contribute expertise, research, and advocacy in key areas of the Foundation's work to the Global Partnership. The Foundation will support the selected Secretariat in communications. It will also contribute efforts to the International Open Data Charter, the Africa Data Consensus and over all, to research, including 500,000 USD towards the publication of the Open Data Barometer. The Foundation will also launch a data innovation lab in Africa to support data literary at national and sub-national data ecosystems and build trust.