Blitz Bureau
DAKAR: Plans for a futuristic city in Senegal dreamt up by singer Akon have been scrapped and instead he will work on something more realistic, officials quoted in a BBC report said.
“The Akon City project no longer exists,” Serigne Mamadou Mboup, the head of Senegal’s tourism development body, Sapco, told the BBC. “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.” Known for his string of noughties chart hits, Akon – who was born in the US but partly raised in Senegal – announced two ambitious projects in 2018 that were supposed to represent the future of African society.
The first was Akon City, reportedly costing $6bn (£5bn). It was to run on the second initiative – a brand new cryptocurrency called Akoin. Initial designs for Akon City, with its boldly curvaceous skyscrapers, were compared by commentators to the awe-inspiring fictional city of Wakanda in Marvel’s Black Panther films and comic books.
But after five years of setbacks, the 800-hectare site in Mbodiène – about 100 km south of the capital, Dakar – remains mostly empty. The only structure is an incomplete reception building. There are no roads, no housing and no power grid. “We were promised jobs and development,” one local resident told the BBC. “Instead, nothing has changed.”
Meanwhile the star’s Akoin cryptocurrency has struggled to repay its investors over the years, with Akon himself conceding: “It wasn’t being managed properly – I take full responsibility for that.”
