Although Akon’s plans to construct a futuristic metropolis in Senegal were abandoned, it seems that the land where it was intended to be located would not be wasted.
The “Locked Up” hitmaker landed a $6 billion deal in 2020 to construct “Akon City,” a city with a cryptocurrency theme, on Senegal’s Atlantic coast.
By the end of 2023, the first phase was planned to be finished, which included building roads, a Hamptons Mall, a Hamptons Hospital campus, a police station, a waste facility, a school and a power plant.
Phase 2 was supposed to finish in 2029 and concentrate on integrating companies to use Akon’s cryptocurrency, AKOIN. Akon City was also supposed to have parks, a stadium, colleges, and an industrial complex.
But because Akon fell short of his pledge, the state recently regained the property that had been set aside for the project. The head of Sapco-Senegal, Serigne Mamadou Mboup, acknowledged that the singer’s project “no longer exists.”
Bloomberg claims that last year, Sapco threatened to forfeit the site if Akon didn’t start construction on his futuristic city within two weeks. Following Akon’s failure to pay Sapco, the majority of the property in Mbodiène, which is located roughly 50 miles southeast of Dakar, the capital of Senegal, was recovered.
In order to turn the area into a popular tourist destination, Sapco has now disclosed that it intends to invest 665 billion CFA francs ($1.2 billion) in hotels, apartments, a marina, and a promenade that links the area to a neighbouring lagoon.
A presentation that Sapco presented states that the travel hub’s objective is to “make Mbodiène a true engine of growth.”
Akon has kept eight hectares of property from Sapco that will support a larger project that will span more than 500 hectares, even though he failed miserably at his crypto metropolis. “What Akon’s preparing with us is a realistic project, which Sapco will fully support,” Mboup stated.
It’s unclear if the failure of Akon’s Senegal project has had an impact on his intentions to construct a futuristic city in Uganda.
