Five years ago rapper Akon announced he was building a futuristic city in Senegal to be powered by his crypto coin Akoin [click here if you missed that].
The plans have been officially scrapped...
From The Daily Mail
Akon's grand plans to build a £4.3 billion futuristic city in Senegal have officially been scrapped five years after the singer promised to turn a remote stretch of West African coastline into a real-life Wakanda.
The Senegalese government has confirmed that instead of the ambitious plan, it was now making way for something more 'realistic'.
Once touted as a high-tech utopia powered entirely by renewable energy and fuelled by its own cryptocurrency, the project has collapsed amid funding woes, stalled construction, and legal headaches.
The admission marks a stunning reversal for a project once unveiled with great fanfare in 2018, when Akon, 52, real name Alioune Badara Thiam, announced plans to build a futuristic smart city near the village of Mbodiène.
Designed with curvy skyscrapers and sleek modern infrastructure, early renderings of Akon City drew comparisons to Marvel's fictional African metropolis Wakanda.
The city, Akon said at the time, would boast a hospital, mall, police station, waste centre, school, and even a solar plant all built by 2023 and running on his own digital currency, Akoin.
But nearly six years later, the 800-hectare site remains virtually untouched.
A single half-built reception centre stands alone in the barren field with no roads, homes, or electricity.
In 2022, Akon insisted the project was '100,000% moving', but no meaningful construction followed the glossy press events
Drone footage taken in recent months showed a flat stretch of grassland, eerily quiet.
Now, with the 2026 Youth Olympic Games on the horizon and the government focused on tourism infrastructure, officials are repurposing the land for a more modest development.
No details have been released on the new plan, but insiders say it's likely to involve less fantasy and more feasibility, with the government keen to avoid another international embarrassment.
Serigne Mamadou, in charge of Senegal's tourism development body, Sapco told the BBC: 'The Akon City project no longer exists.'
'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.'
9 comments:
Crypto money means = MONEY. LOLO
African Dr Umar
who believed it in the first place?
he uggly
Get this African scammer out of here 🤮
^ LOL. When he opened his mouth to say women need men to have babies (as if men don't need women) I knew common sense had curbed him a long time ago.
GOOD
He should partner with Essence. They are very interested in Global ventures.
So he was trying to build a scam city collecting real dollars while the people were supposed to live off play money? I can’t. It’s giving Jim Crow vibes.
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