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Living in an African country, there's a far more casual and accepting approach to corruption than there is in Europe and the US. Most people here, including cops, earn enough to get by as it's far from a poor country but corruption is still endemic. Dirty cops are seldom fired when caught and are not ostracised from their families and social groups. As a result, much of the police force is corrupt, to the point where when you're pulled over for a traffic violation you expect to be asked to pay a bribe. And most people, however wealthy, are more than happy to pay one in order to avoid the admin hassle of an official fine.

Oddly enough, there seems to be an attitude that corruption is your right if you've managed to get employed in certain jobs. There is no big outcry when politicians are found to have been hugely corrupt, instead the attitude amongst most of my fellow Africans who I've spoken on such occasions is that the guy was 'just taking care of himself', an action considered to be perfectly ok. The real anger usually only happens when people perceive that not enough of the public coffers is being directed their way.

The continent's security is hampered by its sheer size and the massive borders of many of its countries. What this means it that few countries have the funds for large and capable enough security forces to exercise control over the whole of their territory. So outside the cities, large parts of the countryside exist in a security vacuum where thugs, rebels, criminals and assorted other unsavoury types essentially have free reign.

It also hampers trade and communication. With communities being spread out over such huge distances, transport infrastructure and the associated costs become vital. But few African nations can afford to maintain proper highway networks and even if they could, there's a lack of sufficient transport capability to effectively utilise it. As a result, intra-state trade is severely limited and inter-state trade even more so. This logistics problem also affects the delivery of aid.

To be fair, this isn't true of all African countries. South Africa and Egypt, for example, are notable exceptions for having a security presence throughout the country, a well-developed and advanced transport infrastructure and so on. But bringing countries like the DRC, CAR & Uganda up to the same level is not going to be an easy task.

And yes, I'd argue that the same cultural flaws that make corruption acceptable in Africa are visible in Asian societies like India and China, though they are far less severe. Perhaps one could argue that they have a far more recent history of prolonged totalitarianism than the US or Western Europe; that with all the years of kings and Rajs, followed by colonialism (Mao's Communist Party in the case of China) and then socialist dictators there just has not yet been time to shift cultures enough.

And I'm frequently in rural villages and settlements, yet the same cultural bias in favour of poor governance and corruption are just as visible there. Village chiefs and the heads of important families are allowed the most outrageous excesses simply by virtue of their rank and there is little anger when money gets skimmed off the top of funds coming from the outside, even when earmarked for development. I can't quite understand it.

Which makes it even less interesting as a story, of course. If two billionaires want to by an ex-military jet, who cares? It's their money.

But that's besides the point. The real story here is that Prop. 8 passed mostly due to the high turnout of African-American voters as a result of Obama's candidacy. As a block, American-Americans tend to vote against gay rights and gay marriage issues, and so the high turnout was what swung the ballot in favour of Prop. 8.

The lesson here should be that the gay community of the US has not done enough to reach out to the African-American community in order to gain greater acceptance and understanding. Despite all the advocacy against white religious conservatives and high-profile court campaigns, there has been precious little effort in convincing voters why they have nothing to fear and why gays should have the right to marry because that would be fair and just.

For many African countries, such as the DRC, this is not the case. They have inherited borders and population groupings that date from colonial eras and have more to do with arbitrary lines drawn on a map than the actual ability of each country to enforce or protect them. As a result there is seldom a single point of origin from which to begin the creation of a security umbrella and then expand outwards; instead they have to individually try to secure a number of cities and towns situated far apart from each other while trying desperately to get a hand on the largely undeveloped and un-patrolled areas in between. To use the DRC as an example, the national army has virtually no control over the land between Kinshasa, the capital, and cities like Goma and North Kivu. There is no proper level of internal security.

When privatising, only one approach makes sense: Selling off all shares and ownership stakes held by the government in the incumbent operator and taking serious steps to make the regulatory environment as amenable to new competitors as possible. If that means selling off the retail side and the infrastructure side separately, so be it.