Plans for a futuristic city in Senegal that singer Akon dreamed up have been scrapped, officials say, and he will be working on a more realistic one.
“The Akon City project is no more,” Cherine Mamadou Mboub, the head of Senegal’s tourism development body Chapco, told the BBC.
“Fortunately, an agreement has been reached between Chapco and the entrepreneur Alioune Badara Thiam [aka Akon]. What he is producing with us is a realistic project, which Chapco will fully support.”
Born in the US and raised partly in Senegal, Akon, known for his consistently poor chart success, announced two ambitious projects in 2018 that are seen as representing the future of African society.
The first is Akon City – said to cost $6 billion (£5 billion). It was to be powered by a brand new cryptocurrency called Acoin.
Commentators have compared the initial designs for Aegon City, with its bold, curving skyscrapers, to Wakanda, the stunning fantasy city that appears in Marvel’s Black Panther films and comic books.
But after five years of setbacks, the 800-hectare site in Mbodiin, about 100km (60 miles) south of the capital Dakar, remains largely empty. The only structure is an unfinished reception building. There are no roads, no houses, no electricity grid.
“We were promised jobs and development,” one local resident told the BBC. “But nothing has changed.”
Meanwhile, the star’s Aegon cryptocurrency has struggled to repay its investors for years, with Aegon itself admitting: “It’s not being managed properly – I take full responsibility for that.”
There have also been questions about whether Aegon is legal for Aegon residents to use as their primary payment method. Senegal uses the CFA franc, which is regulated and issued by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), and several central banks have expressed opposition to cryptocurrency.
The first phase alone will include a hospital, a shopping mall, a school, a police station, a waste center and a solar power plant – all of which are due to be completed by the end of 2023.
Located on Senegal’s Atlantic coast, Aegon’s high-tech, eco-friendly city is set to run entirely on renewable energy.
But despite Aegon insisting in a 2022 BBC interview that the project is “100,000% mobile,” no significant construction has taken place since its initial launch.
The Senegalese government has now confirmed what many suspected – the project is beyond recovery. Officials have halted construction efforts, citing a lack of funding.
While Aegon City was initially shelved as envisioned, the government says it is now working with Aegon on a more “realistic” development plan for the same site.
With the 2026 Youth Olympic Games approaching and tourism activities expected to increase, the land near Embodi is of high strategic value.
