Akon’s futuristic $6 billion city in Senegal has officially been abandoned after years of delays and no construction beyond a single building.
Akon saw his $6 billion vision for a futuristic city in Senegal collapse after the government reclaimed the land and confirmed the project was dead.
The ambitious plan, first unveiled in 2018, promised a high-tech utopia powered by renewable energy and fueled by Akoin, his own cryptocurrency.
However, after six years, the only thing standing on the 800-hectare site near Mbodiene is an unfinished welcome center.
Senegalese officials have now pulled the plug and plan to replace the failed project with something more practical, BBC News reports.
“The Akon City project no longer exists,” said Serigne Mamadou Mboup, head of the country’s tourism development agency Sapco. “Fortunately, an agreement has been reached between Sapco and the entrepreneur Alioune Badara Thiam [Akon]. What he’s preparing with us is a realistic project, which Sapco will fully support.”
The site, once hyped as a real-life Wakanda, was supposed to include luxury housing, hospitals, shopping centers and a stadium.
Instead, it remains barren, with no roads, no homes and no infrastructure. Local residents who gave up their land for the project say they haven’t been paid.
Akon admitted the project was mishandled. “Full responsibility,” he said previously, acknowledging that Akoin wasn’t properly managed and that the city’s financial model couldn’t survive the regulatory and economic challenges.
The cryptocurrency, once central to the city’s economy, has lost nearly all its value and ran into legal trouble with Senegal’s central bank.
The government issued multiple warnings to Akon to either start construction or give the land back. With no progress made, officials finally stepped in.
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