In 2018, Akon shared his plans of building a futuristic pan-African city in his home country of Senegal, describing it as the as a “a real-life Wakanda” in reference to the Afro-futuristic city in Marvel’s movie, Black Panther. The Locked Up singer, who spent most of his childhood in the West African nation, announced that the city will use a cryptocurrency called AKoin.
In 2020, despite the impact of the coronavirus on the global economy, he assured that he was going ahead with his plans to construct the city. He told the Associated Press that the construction of the $6 billion project will commence in 2021. Providing more details about the project, the musician said he hoped it would create jobs for locals in the West African nation as well as serve as a “home back home” for Black Americans and other people in the diaspora who are being racially discriminated against.
“The system back home treats them unfairly in so many different ways that you can never imagine. And they only go through it because they feel that there is no other way,” said Akon.
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“So if you’re coming from America or Europe or elsewhere in the diaspora and you feel that you want to visit Africa, we want Senegal to be your first stop.”
The singer, who traveled to the site of the project in Mbodienne with government officials in August 2020, said he had been able to acquire one-third of the $6 billion needed for the project. He, however, did not reveal the investors, saying non-disclosure agreements are in effect.
That year, Face2Face Africa reported that it would take over three years for the first phase of the project to be completed once construction begins. The city will have facilities including a hotel that would have rooms designed specifically for each of the 54 African countries, a seaside resort, a tech hub, a movie hub known as “Senewood” as well as recording studios, among others.
Indeed, the project was expected to be completed by 2023 but it is now in doubt as it has faced significant challenges and delays. In 2021, Akon’s former business partner, Devyne Stephens, brought a $4 million lawsuit against the singer, claiming that he still owed him money from a 2018 settlement agreement, the Guardian Newspaper reported.
In March 2022, a legal document by Stephens, who has worked with Akon and other celebrities like Jay-Z and Destiny’s Child, asked the Manhattan Supreme Court judge to freeze the singer’s assets in New York until a judgment is reached in the $4 million lawsuit Stephens filed against Akon in 2021. Stephens argued that the court must freeze the musician’s assets to enable him to get his money if the judgment goes in his favor.
In an affidavit, Stephens’s lawyer, Jeffrey Movit, said Akon City and Akoin exhibited “many of the trademark characteristics … of fraudulent business ventures such as Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes”. He further alleged that Akon City was “likely a scam”.
Despite denying the allegations about Akon City, the singer paid $850,000 to settle part of the ongoing lawsuit in April 2022.
Akon also noted that the Covid pandemic was to blame for the delays and that plans were “100,000% moving,” according to the Guardian. He further noted that he was working on a 10-year timetable to complete the project.
Last December, the Society for the Development and Promotion of Coasts and Tourist Zones (Sapco), which loaned the singer $2m for the project, threatened to withdraw from the project if it had not advanced by the following year.
To make matters worse, Akon’s megacity also has land rights issues. The first phase of the project was expected to be built on 55 hectares of land secured by Sapco in Mbodiène, ultimately expanding into a further 500 hectares by the end of the decade, the Guardian reported.
The land belonged to several hundred people who were owed compensation from the Senegalese government. Some of the former residents told the British newspaper that they had not been compensated.
So far, the only tangible sign of construction of Akon City, aside from the Welcome Center, is a recently built youth center, the platform reported last December. The project was financed by Akon as part of the conditions he had to fulfill to get the blessing of Mbodiène.
“Every village chief would desire a project like this, because we are expecting jobs for men, women and the youth in Mbodiène,” said Mbodiène village’s chief Michel Diome, who threw his weight behind the project that is yet to see the light of day.
