Singer Akon’s plans for a $6 billion city in Senegal have been abandoned in favour of something more ‘realistic’.
Dubbed Akon City, the city would be a high-tech, eco-friendly ‘home back home’ for African-Americans and other black communities around the world and have its own crypto currency called Akoin.
Early designs showed futuristic buildings, including curvaceous skyscrapers, with several people comparing the city to the fictional Wakanda in Marvel’s Black Panther films and comics.
The Locked up singer, who had a string of hits in the noughties, announced the plans in 2018 and in 2020 said he’d secured funding and had officially bought the land.
However, Serigne Mamadou Mboup, the head of Senegal’s tourism development body, Sapco, has now told the BBC: ‘The Akon City project no longer exists.’
He added: ‘Fortunately, an agreement has been reached between Sapco and the entrepreneur Alioune Badara Thiam [aka Akon]. What he’s preparing with us is a realistic project, which Sapco will fully support.’
In 2020 Akon said construction had started, but all that has been built on the 800-hectare site is a reception building, which is only half finished.
There are no roads, housing or a power grid.
Plans for phase one – that were due to be completed by the end of 2023 – included a hospital, shopping mall, school, police station, a waste centre and a solar plant.
The city, 60 miles south of Senegal’s capital, Dakar was to be powered solely by renewable energy.
Officials reportedly blamed funding, legal and construction issues for the the project’s demise.
The value of Akon’s cryptocurrency, Akoin, designed to power the economy of the city, also plummeted in value.
The singer has previously conceded that it ‘wasn’t being managed properly’, adding ‘I take full responsibility for that’.
As the country prepares for the arrival of next year’s Youth Olympic Games, there are now plans for a more modest development on the Akon City site, which sits along the West African country’s coastline.
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