Two years ago, a group of elders in a village in north-western Uganda agreed to lend their land to refugees from South Sudan. About 120,000 are now in the surrounding area. Here they live in tarpaulin shelters and mud-brick huts on a patch of scrub where cows once grazed. Kemis Butele, a gravel-voiced Ugandan elder, explains that hosting refugees is a way for a remote place, long neglected by the central government, to get noticed. He hopes for new schools, clinics and a decent road – and “that our children can get jobs.” There are more than 20 million refugees in the world today, more than at any time since the end of the second world war. Nearly 90% reside in poor countries. In many, to preserve jobs for natives, governments bar refugees from working in the formal economy. Uganda has shown how a different approach can reap dividends. The government gives refugees land plots and lets them work. In some places, the refugees boost local businesses and act as a magnet for foreign aid. Mr. Butele and many other Ugandans see their new neighbors as a benefit, not a burden. Sadly, such attitudes are still the exception. 

Refugees are “brothers and sisters,”say many Ugandans. Mr. Butele was once one himself. But the welcome is also a pragmatic one. Northern Uganda is so poor that some locals pose as refugees to receive food aid. Others see refugees as buyers for local goods. Elsewhere in Uganda has indeed seen such positive spillover. One study from 2016 found that the presence of Congolese refugees in western Uganda had increased consumption per household. Another estimates that each new refugee household boosts total income, including that of refugees, by $320-430 more than the cost of the aid the household is given. That rises to $560-670 when refugees are given cash instead of rations.