Plans for Akon's £5 billion Senegal city have been scrapped after seven years.
The proposed city named after Senegalese-American pop star, real name Alioune Badara Thiam, will not come to fruition at the 800-hectare site in Mbodiène, 100km south of capital city Dakar, BBC reports. "The Akon City project no longer exists," head of Sapco, Senegal's tourism development body, Serigne Mamadou Mboup told the BBC. "Fortunately, an agreement has been reached between Sapco and the entrepreneur Alioune Badara Thiam. What he's preparing with us is a realistic project, which Sapco will fully support."
Initially announced in 2018, Akon City was planned to run on a new, custom cryptocurrency called Akoin and renewable energy, with phase one, including a hospital, mall, school, police station and waste plant, estimated for completion in 2023. In 2022, Akon said the city's plans were "100% moving".
Today, the location's one structure is an "incomplete" reception building, with no roads, housing nor power infrastructure. A local resident told BBC: "We were promised jobs and development... Instead, nothing has changed."
The Akoin cryptocurrency has also struggled with repaying investors and questions of legality. "It wasn't being managed properly — I take full responsibility for that", Akon said in 2022.
In 2021, Akon announced plans to build a second city in Uganda, set to finish in 2036. There's no new word on the future of the Akon City Uganda project.