Higher education institutions dominate research productivity in many parts of the world. Nonetheless, many academics in developing countries--including Tanzania--perform poorly in research. This study aims to qualitatively explore the barriers to research productivity in Tanzanian public higher education institutions. Using semi-structured interviews with thirty university leaders, regulatory agency officials, and academics from Tanzania's four largest public institutions and reviewing official documents on higher education, the study found that institutional and individual factors hinder academic research productivity. Institutional barriers include inadequate research funding, heavy workloads, weak collaboration, fragmented research policies, a lack of researchers with impeccable credentials, weak databases, weak mentorship, and informal rewards and incentives. Individual barriers included limited research expertise and interest. Overcoming these challenges requires strategic inter- and intra-institutional collaboration. It also requires capacity-building, instituted mentorship for young researchers, redesigned incentive and rewards programs, improved funding, policy harmonization, and strengthened institutional and national research repositories.