By Frank Kamuntu
A single arched concrete block juts out of a field in Senegal where R&B singer Akon first laid the foundation stone for his $6 billion metropolis four years ago.
The West African nation granted the artist 136 acres of land on its Atlantic Coast in 2020 to build his Akon City — envisioned as a real-life Wakanda, the fictional country from Marvel Studios’ Black Panther films.
Complete with condominiums, amusement parks and a seaside resort in gravity-defying skyscrapers rising above the rural landscape, Akon City would run on solar power and his Akoin cryptocurrency, the American-Senegalese singer said during a flashy presentation in Senegal’s capital, Dakar.
Today, goats and cows graze the deserted pasture 60 miles south of Dakar, and authorities are growing increasingly impatient.
Sapco-Senegal, the state-owned entity charged with developing the country’s coastal and tourism areas, has given Akon formal notice to start work on his project or the government will take back 90% of the land granted to him, General Manager Serigne Mboup said by email.
Akon got the notice after missing several payments to Sapco, two people familiar with the matter said. A spokesperson for Akon declined to comment. A member of his staff said he wasn’t aware of any notice when reached by phone. Sapco declined to answer further questions.
In addition to the luxury apartments and seaside resort, Akon, 51, also envisioned hospitals, a police station and a university equipped with cutting-edge technology.
Akon City was to be solar-powered and environmentally friendly, the artist said in 2020. Residents and visitors would use Akoin cryptocurrency launched that year.
Akoin — introduced at the peak of a cryptocurrency bull run in November 2020 — is now hardly traded, if at all. The Bitget crypto exchange first quoted it at $0.15 on Nov. 19, 2020, and it had dwindled to $0.003 by Dec. 11, the last available price.
Local authorities were open to Akon’s promises to attract businesses and create jobs in an economically deprived, mostly agrarian part of Senegal.
“Akon City would bring employment for our youth,” Mbodiene village chief Michel Diome said. “We would finally have a hospital and even a university.”
Akon was born in the US and spent his early childhood in Senegal before moving to New Jersey, where he discovered his passion for music. Born Aliaune Thiam, Akon rose to prominence in the early 2000s with the release of his 2004 debut album Trouble. He’s had 37 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 — including “Locked Up”, “Lonely” and “Smack That” — some of which include collaborations with the likes of Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Gwen Stefani, and sold more than 35 million albums globally.
“I was always thinking the day I get big, or the day I can be of an influence or have some kind of power to make decisions in Africa, I want to go in and start developing,” he said in 2020.
In 2007, Akon had founded Akon Lighting Africa with the goal to distribute solar-powered solutions to off-grid parts of the continent. Akon City was his boldest idea yet, and required getting former Senegalese president Macky Sall on board.
With a 10-year construction plan, the first phase of the project — including the hospital, condos and an “African village” — was set to be completed by 2023.
“By phase one, we’ll be able to welcome visitors into the city,” Akon said in 2020. He later said the pandemic pushed the ambitious deadline forward.
Construction on the first Akon City in Senegal hadn’t even started when Akon revealed plans to build a second city in Uganda.
Yoweri Museveni, president of the East African country since 1986, allocated one square mile of land to the singer in 2021. So far, preliminary work is pending “because occupants resisted the move and sent away surveyors,” Uganda Land Commission Secretary Andrew Nyumba said by phone from the capital, Kampala.
Uganda will hand the land to the developer after the occupants are compensated, and the payments can only start from July 2025 because the government didn’t budget for them in the current financial year, Nyumba said.
Back in Senegal, residents say they haven’t been reimbursed for the land given to Akon that they relinquished to Sapco back in 2009. Questions about financing and feasibility remain unanswered and locals are wondering whether the promised benefits will ever come.
So far, the singer has financed the construction of a youth center and a basketball court in Mbodiene and an information center for visitors curious about Akon City. But nothing resembling the futuristic blueprints he unveiled in 2020 has been built.
“Akon City is a scandal,” lawmaker Bara Gaye told parliament in February 2023. “What is the government waiting for to end his contract?”
Still, Cheick Seck, a project manager with Dakar-based Axiome Construction, said that works in Mbodiene are moving ahead.
“Akon City is happening,” Seck said. “We’re just waiting for instructions on how to proceed.”
Geotechnical studies, clearing of brush and an inventory of protected plant species on part of the land are underway, according to a statement shared by Akon’s Dakar-based partners with local media late last year.
Akon is expected in Senegal’s capital in the coming weeks to reassure partners of the project’s viability, his team said.
Once a fierce believer in Akon’s plans for his community, Mbodiene village chief Diome said his hopes that the singer would transform his community were dwindling.
“We’re still waiting,” he said.
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