Akon’s £5 billion city in Senegal has been scrapped
Akon was planning to build a futuristic city in Senegal, costing £5 billion, but now the whole thing has been scrapped. Instead, he will reportedly be working on something more “realistic.”
Serigne Mamadou Mboup, head of Senegal’s tourism development body, confirmed the project’s status on July 4th.
“The Akon City project no longer exists,” he told the BBC. “Fortunately, an agreement has been reached between Sapco and the entrepreneur Alioune Badara Thiam [also known as Akon]. What he’s preparing with us is a realistic project, which Sapco will fully support.”
Akon City was first announced in 2018. The singer, inspired by the Black Panther movie, claimed the city would be a “real-life Wakanda” that uses a digital currency called Akoin.
Near the village of Mbodiène, the 800-hectare city was said to include modern skyscrapers, a school, a hospital, a shopping centre, a police station, a waste centre, and a solar plant.
It was previously claimed that the first phase of Akon City would begin construction in 2023 and be completed by 2028. However, they failed to meet that target.
One local resident said of the plans, “We were promised jobs and development. Instead, nothing has changed.”
When he first announced the project, Akon said, “Senegal is home to my family and heritage. I want to make a lasting impact that bridges the gap between the people of Senegal and the rest of the world.”
He later admitted that he announced Akon City too soon. “My biggest thing was I promoted it way, way, way too early,” he told AllHipHop. “Of course, anything that exciting that would change a culture, people will naturally want to know what’s happening right now, assuming that it’s already happening. But it was in a process of creating.”
Akon is best known for hit singles like ‘Don’t Matter’, ‘I Wanna Love You’, ‘Smack That’, ‘Lonely’, ‘Locked Up’ and ‘Sorry, Blame It on Me’ in the mid-2000s.