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 in 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 a 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.”
