Wakanda-style $6bn project abandoned by Senegal

Plans for a futuristic city in Senegal dreamt up by the singer Akon have been scrapped and instead he will work on something more realistic, officials say.

“The Akon City project no longer exists,” Serigne Mamadou Mboup, the head of Senegal’s tourism development body, Sapco, told the BBC.

“Fortunately, an agreement has been reached between Sapco and the entrepreneur Alioune Badara Thiam [aka Akon]. What he’s preparing with us is a realistic project, which Sapco will fully support.”

Known for his string of noughties chart hits, Akon – who was born in the US but partly raised in Senegal – announced two ambitious projects in 2018 that were supposed to represent the future of African society.

The first was Akon City – reportedly costed at $6bn (£5bn). It was to run on the second initiative – a brand new cryptocurrency called Akoin.

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 Mbodiène – about 100km (60 miles) 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.

“We were promised jobs and development,” one local resident told the BBC. “Instead, nothing has changed.”

Meanwhile the star’s Akoin cryptocurrency has struggled to repay its investors over the years, with Akon himself conceding: “It wasn’t being managed properly – I take full responsibility for that.”

There had also been questions over whether it would even be legal for Akoin to operate as the primary payment method for would-be residents of Akon City. Senegal uses the CFA franc, which is regulated and issued by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), and like many central banks has expressed opposition to cryptocurrency.

The plans for Akon City had been sweeping.

Phase one alone was to include a hospital, a shopping mall, a school, a police station, a waste centre, and a solar plant – all by the end of 2023.

Sitting on Senegal’s Atlantic Coast, Akon’s high-tech, eco-friendly city was supposed to run entirely on renewable energy.

But despite Akon’s insistence in a 2022 BBC interview that the project was “100,000% moving”, no significant construction followed the initial launch ceremony.

Now the Senegalese government has confirmed what many suspected – the project had stalled beyond recovery. Officials cited a lack of funding and halted construction efforts as key reasons for the decision.

Although Akon City as it was originally imagined has been shelved, the government says it is now working with Akon on a more “realistic” development project for the same site.

The land near Mbodiène remains of high strategic value, especially with the 2026 Youth Olympic Games approaching and increased tourism activity expected.