Grete Benjaminsen is senior advisor and portfolio coordinator in the Section for Higher Education and Research, Norad (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation), the main body responsible for implementing the Norwegian government’s support to the higher education and research sector in the Global South. The ultimate goal of this support is to contribute to a self-sustained and well-functioning academic sector in Sub-Saharan Africa able to deliver on its social mission, that is – to produce a quality workforce well-suited for local labor markets and to produce African-led quality research that engages with society.

Grete has a PhD in Development Studies. In addition to working with the academic sector in Sub Saharan Africa, her competence areas include governance and power in international environment and development initiatives, climate mitigation initiatives, forest and land management, decentralization processes and participatory/community-based approaches, civil society in Africa, gendered roles and gender relations, ethnography and qualitative methods, the Swahili coast, east and central Africa, Sub Saharan Africa.