(CNN) -- Privacy is vital to my sense of self. It is as important as breathing; each breath may be my last. So I am acutely aware of how difficult it must have been for Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, the world's richest company, to sacrifice his privacy and expose himself to public scrutiny in an essentially homophobic world. The fact that a CEO of a fortune 500 company's decision to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality made international news on the same scale as Ebola exposes the persistence of homophobia and hetero-sexism in the West -- despite the existence of laws to protect LGBT people in the USA and elsewhere.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly acknowledged his homosexuality last week
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Olumide Femi Makanjuola says decision to do so is not easy, whoever and wherever you are
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Makanjuola: Announcement a reminder that clothes, not human beings, belong in the closet
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"I look forward to a day when a powerful African CEO publicly acknowledges that they are LGBT"
Coming out as @placeholder is not an easy thing to do anywhere in the world, even if you are the head of a global company such as Apple.
While I was not surprised by the news about @placeholder (though not because I had any prior information about his sexuality), I did wonder why he had decided to trade in his privacy.