Interdisciplinary research plays an important role in addressing complex issues in African countries that are still grappling with grand challenges like water, sanitation, agriculture, health, desertification, renewable energy, environment, natural resources and security. The objective of this paper is to examine the importance of interdisciplinary research, how to establish right conditions for interdisciplinary working and to construct a model that applies project management principles for realization of research, innovations and interventions that are beneficial to development of African countries. Electronic databases were used to search for secondary data, findings summarized and analyzed thematically. The paper concludes that interdisciplinary research needs to be developed systematically based on stipulated agreements and policies which will be the basis of governance of the projects. It is recommended that principles of project management need to be applied in management of interdisciplinary collaborative research projects.