Ultimatum for Akon’s dream city

A single arched concrete block juts out of a field in Senegal where R&B singer Akon first laid the foundation stone for his $6bn metropolis four years ago. Moneyweb reports that the government granted the artist 136 acres of land on the Atlantic Coast in 2020 to build his Akon City – envisioned as a real-life Wakanda, the fictional country from Marvel Studios’ Black Panther films. Complete with condominiums, amusement parks and a seaside resort in gravity-defying skyscrapers rising above the rural landscape, Akon City would run on solar power and his Akoin cryptocurrency, the American-Senegalese singer said. Today, goats and cows graze the deserted pasture 100km south of Dakar, and authorities are growing increasingly impatient. Sapco-Senegal, the state-owned entity charged with developing the country’s coastal and tourism areas, has given Akon formal notice to start work on his project or the government will take back 90% of the land granted to him. Akon allegedly missed several payments to Sapco, two sources said.