A single arched concrete block juts out of a field in Senegal, where R&B singer Akon laid the foundation stone for his US$6 billion (S$7.95 billion) metropolis four years ago.
The West African nation granted the music artiste 55ha 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 (2018 and 2022).
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 in 2020, during a flashy presentation in Senegal’s capital of Dakar.
Today, goats and cows graze the deserted pasture 96km south of Dakar, and the 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 per cent of the land granted to him, general manager Serigne Mboup said.
Akon, 51, got the notice after missing several payments to Sapco, two people familiar with the matter said.
A spokesperson for the singer declined to comment. A member of his staff said he was not aware of any notice when reached by phone. Sapco declined to answer further questions.
Besides the luxury apartments and seaside resort, Akon also envisioned hospitals, a police station and a university equipped with cutting-edge technology.
Akon City was to be environmentally friendly, the artiste said in 2020, and residents and visitors would use Akoin cryptocurrency launched that year.
Akoin – introduced during 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 15 US cents on Nov 19, 2020, and it had dwindled to 0.003 US cents by Dec 11, 2023, 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, he rose to prominence with the release of his 2004 debut album, Trouble.
He has had 37 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 – including Locked Up (2004), Lonely (2005) and Smack That (2006) – some of which include collaborations with the likes of stars 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 told CNN in 2020.
In 2007, Akon 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 told CNN in 2020. He later said the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the ambitious deadline forward.
Construction on Akon City in Senegal had not even started when the singer revealed plans to build a second city in Uganda.
Mr Yoweri Museveni, president of the East African country since 1986, allocated 2.6 sq km of land to Akon 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 start only from July 2025 because the government did not budget for them in the current financial year, Mr Nyumba said.
Back in Senegal, residents say they have not been reimbursed for the land given to Akon that they relinquished to Sapco 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 centre and a basketball court in Mbodiene and an information centre 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, Mr Cheick Seck, a project manager with Dakar-based Axiome Construction, said that works in Mbodiene are moving ahead.
“Akon City is happening,” he added. “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 under way, according to a statement shared by Akon’s Dakar-based partners with local media in late 2023.
The singer 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.
Credit: BLOOMBERG
