This paper focuses on the assessment of the implications of research policies on the performance of research at the institutions of higher learning in Africa. There are numerous challenges the institutions face and these among others include limited supply of high quality evaluation evidence, which is seen as the market failure for both education outcomes and the institutional research. The public seems to have limited information about performance in universities and educators face limited incentives to improve performance. In the market for institutional research, consumers face information problems, which in turn make it difficult to determine the quality of research product due to work overloads on the part of the lecturers and students. The success of institutional research policies are therefore based on requiring better data in the institutions under study to ascertain the workloads and  to limit management interferences in research.