Africa has been the testing site for various economic models. Globalization after the fall of the Soviet Union presents governments around the world with various options for financing development and providing public goods. Public-private partnerships through contractual agreements are one model that is being promoted for the efficient delivery of public goods and services in the developing world. Since 1990s, government contract in developing countries is seen as a prerequisite to administrative, economic, and social development. At the international level, government contract reform is driven my concerns over trade discrimination, the belief in free market competition, and the rule of law to bring about efficiency in public services delivery given recurring budgetary crises in public administration…etc. Notwithstanding the key roles of law in shaping public institutions and policy, the perspective of practitioners remains important for a holistic approach to reform implementation. This paper analyzes the challenges to implementing public-private partnerships in development through contractual agreements in Africa. I used firm level data from manufacturing and services sectors in selected countries to analyze problematic patterns in contract valuation in public-private partnerships.  While findings suggest significant hurdles in government contracts valuation due to loss through corruption, they paradoxically show that the African case, when compared to the U.S. and Canada is not atypical as one might presupposed.  Similarity between Africa and the US and Canada is then presented through a thematic review of cases and preliminary findings of The Charbonneau Commission on corruption in Montreal, Canada, and the short-lived Moreland Commission on Public Corruption in New York State, US. The resemblance of cases and problems in government contract valuation in Africa and North America suggests similarity-based approaches to comparative analysis may hold better analytical and explanatory power than traditional deductive logic in understanding development and institutional reform today.