Stakeholder Perspectives on Strengthening University Research in Tanzania

This study examined how higher education stakeholders in Tanzania perceive the role of research and identified strategies to strengthen it within the country’s higher education system. Adopting a stakeholder theory approach, the study generated data using document analysis and semi-structured interviews with higher education policymakers, university leaders, academic staff and postgraduate students. While research is widely recognised as central to national development, institutional legitimacy and academic careers, the study revealed significant differences in its meaning and implementation. These differences are not merely perceptual but reflect deeper structural misalignments between power, responsibility, incentives and capacity within the research governance system. Similarly, the strategies proposed by stakeholders to strengthen research all share the same goal: to realign expectations, incentives and resources so that research becomes a collective and supported endeavour rather than an individual or symbolic responsibility. Overall, strengthening university research requires more than policy affirmation and performance-related pressure. It demands the deliberate integration of stakeholder interests through reciprocal commitment, credible accountability and sustained investment in enabling conditions.