Singer Akon's $7.7 billion ‘Wakanda' futuristic city dream crumbles in Senegal
R&B singer Akon' failed to deliver on his dream of a real-life Wakanda in the debt-stricken country.
Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire – Senegal scrapped R&B singer Akon's plans for a US$6 billion (S$7.7 billion) futuristic city on the country's Atlantic Coast, and opted for a scaled-back project in the debt-stricken country that will rely on private funding.
Announced in 2018 as a
tech-driven, eco-friendly utopia for the global Black community with its own cryptocurrency, 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 Mbodiene - about 100km south of the capital, Dakar - remains mostly empty. The only structure is an incomplete reception building. There are no roads, no housing, no power grid, the BBC reported.
That project 'no longer exists,' Serigne Mamadou Mboup, head of Sapco-Senegal, the state-owned entity that develops coastal and tourism areas, told L'Agence de presse sénégalaise.
In 2024, Sapco gave Akon two weeks to begin work on the development or risk forfeiting the land. Most of it was reclaimed after Akon missed payments to Sapco.
Meanwhile the star's Akoin cryptocurrency has struggled to repay its investors over the years, with Akon, Senegalese-American, conceding: 'It wasn't being managed properly - I take full responsibility for that.'
Sapco now plans to spend 665 billion CFA francs (S$1.5 billion) turning the area into a tourism hub with hotels, apartments, a marina and promenade connecting the area to a nearby lagoon.
The project is being developed as Senegal deals with a debt crisis that emerged after a state audit found that former President Macky Sall's administration accumulated US$7 billion (S$9 billion) of previously unreported loans. The so-called hidden liabilities restricted the West African nation's access to global credit markets and led the International Monetary Fund to freeze US$1.8 billion of funding.
The government expects its plan will deliver on part of the original promise, with about 15,000 jobs expected in the first phase, according to Sapco.
The new plan may finally offer opportunity for local investment, jobs and a reason for young people to stay, said Jean Wally Sene, a school teacher and resident of Mbodiène.
'For a very long time, people, including Akon, have been coming here trying to sell us dreams and illusions,' Ms Sene said. 'Finally, there's a dream for Mbodiène that we dare to believe in.' BLOOMBERG
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