Plans finalised for Senegal’s ‘Akon City’

US hip hop star Akon has announced that his plans to build a city in Senegal, provisionally named Akon City, have been finalised. 

The rapper tweeted a picture on Monday standing next to officials in Senegal, where his family originally hails from. 

Though little is known about plans for the city, which have been in the pipeline since 2018, Akon has touted it as a “real life Wakanda” - the fictional homeland of Marvel’s Black Panther. So far 2,000 acres of land have been promised by Senegalese authorities to kick the project off. 

There is some discrepancy as to where the city will actually be placed, with some sources indicating that it might in fact be built on the site of Diamniadio - a city currently under development. Promotional material used on Akon’s ‘Crypto City’ website last year turned out to be pictures of housing developments scheduled to be built in Diamiandio Lake City. This project was announced over four years ago, as part of President Macky Sall’s scheme to revitalise Senegal’s economy. 

However the Semer Group, which is overseeing the construction of Diamiandio, says it has nothing to do with Akon and was unaware that its image had been used. 

The musician has also announced a semi-eponymous cryptocurrency - Akoin - which he hopes to roll out across the city and eventually the African continent. He anticipates that the currency will be at the centre of the city’s “transactional life”, but admitted in 2018 that he would leave it to “the geeks” to figure out the specifics. 

Photo credit: Twitter | Akon