For twenty years, Uganda has been to every conceivable financier — oil majors, sovereign funds, development banks, mysterious gentlemen in hotel lobbies — asking, politely, for help building a refinery. Two decades of feasibility studies, and negotiations that dissolved the moment anyone was asked to transfer money.
Meanwhile, Washington has quietly discovered a new export product: its own residents. Small nations are being paid handsomely to accept deportees nobody else wants — Palau, measuring 460 square kilometres, reportedly pocketed $7.5 million for 75 people. Uganda, five hundred times the size, already hosting two million refugees turned away by the weird politics of our neighbours, should ask a simple question: why should Palau eat the pilau alone?
