By Patrick Kabanda

The Kingdom of Wakanda has unanimously voted to grant President Donald J. Trump asylum should he choose to move there anytime after January 20, 2021. The vote came shortly after Mr. Trump’s bitter defeat in the 2020 U.S. election and after Wakanda decided to forgive him for his crass remark in January 2018 calling Haiti and African countries “shithole countries.”

Although Wakanda was happy to have the Trump Administration add it to the list of America’s free-trade partners last year, the forgiveness was chiefly inspired by President-elect Joe Biden’s speech on the eve of November 7th. Mr. Biden implored the deeply divided Americans to come together and stop demonizing each other, a sentiment that reverberated across the world, reaching the high-tech East African kingdom in nanoseconds.

Whether Mr. Trump will accept the offer or not remains to be seen, for he is busy trying to litigate his way to a second term, a move that isn’t entirely irrational since, among other things, he has survived some four thousand lawsuits during his presidency, and leaving office might mean that a buck on his luck is finally here.

But in this historic election, which carried Kamala Harris to become America’s first female Vice President-elect, although millions of people voted for Mr. Trump, even more in the millions had enough of him. One woman attending a celebration at Black Lives Matter Plaza just across The White House, for example, was seen carrying a suitcase with a sign (in all caps Trump tweet style) that read: “PACK YOUR SH*T AND GET OUT.”

Wakanda’s ambassador to Washington couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. But the embassy’s spokesperson said that Wakanda is a transformational place, a place where forgiveness is elevated against vengeance, apathy swapped for empathy, and where it’s understood that losing is part of life.

Asked about how Wakanda will maintain Mr. Trump and his family, the spokesperson paused for a second and said, “Look, people tend to assume that all African countries are poor.  But that’s far from the truth, and while some countries are low income, none of them is a shithole.”

Indeed, Mr. Trump shouldn’t be surprised to find that, unlike America’s crumbling infrastructure, Wakanda’s streets are literally paved in vibranium. His move there, moreover, could teach him a thing or two as he calculates his political future: Besides managing Covid-19 swiftly, the resource rich kingdom, which ditched trickle-down economics years ago, has made comprehensive progress in unimaginable proportions. And it did so largely by tackling illicit financial transfers, secret deals and tax evasion, as Kofi Annan recommended, and applying a progressive tax code that doesn’t just reward corporations and the ultra wealthy, as Eli Broad argued, but works for everyone in the credo of collective good. As a result, Wakanda’s quality of life is on cloud nine, and not just for stars like the superhero Black Panther, but for all who live there.

Whether Mr. Trump decides to go or not, in Wakanda he might find inspiration. For the  kingdom hasn’t just been talking; it has been making itself greater and greater each day. And if anything, it offers some of the best hair stylists and golf courses in the world.

Patrick Kabanda is the author of The Creative Wealth of Nations (Cambridge 2018), with a foreword by Amartya Sen. He has consulted for the United Nations Development Programme as well as the Office of the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank. He received a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy degree from The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School. A frequent speaker and performer, he continues to lecture and perform across the world. @Arts4Dev