Akon's futuristic $6bn city project in Senegal abandoned, BBC told

Plans for a futuristic metropolis successful Senegal dreamt up by the vocalist Akon person been scrapped and alternatively helium volition enactment connected thing much realistic, officials say.

"The Akon City task nary longer exists," Serigne Mamadou Mboup, the caput of Senegal's tourism improvement body, Sapco, told the BBC.

"Fortunately, an statement has been reached betwixt Sapco and the entrepreneur Alioune Badara Thiam [aka Akon]. What he's preparing with america is simply a realistic project, which Sapco volition afloat support."

Known for his drawstring of noughties illustration hits, Akon - who was calved successful the US but partially raised successful Senegal - announced 2 ambitious projects successful 2018 that were expected to correspond the aboriginal of African society.

The archetypal was Akon City - reportedly costed astatine $6bn (£5bn). It was to tally connected the 2nd inaugural - a marque caller cryptocurrency called Akoin.

Initial designs for Akon City, with its boldly curvaceous skyscrapers, were compared by commentators to the awe-inspiring fictional metropolis of Wakanda successful Marvel's Black Panther films and comic books.

But aft 5 years of setbacks, the 800-hectare tract successful Mbodiène - astir 100km (60 miles) southbound of the capital, Dakar - remains mostly empty. The lone operation is an incomplete reception building. There are nary roads, nary housing, nary powerfulness grid.

"We were promised jobs and development," 1 section nonmigratory told the BBC. "Instead, thing has changed."

Meanwhile the star's Akoin cryptocurrency has conflict to repay its investors implicit the years, with Akon himself conceding: "It wasn't being managed decently - I instrumentality afloat work for that."

There had besides been questions implicit whether it would adjacent beryllium ineligible for Akoin to run arsenic the superior outgo method astatine Akon City. Senegal uses the CFA franc, which is regulated and issued by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), and similar galore cardinal banks has expressed absorption to cryptocurrency.

The plans for Akon City had been sweeping.

Phase 1 unsocial was to see a hospital, a buying mall, a school, a constabulary station, a discarded centre, and a star works - each by the extremity of 2023.

Sitting connected Senegal's Atlantic Coast, Akon's high-tech, eco-friendly metropolis was expected to tally wholly connected renewable energy.

But contempt Akon's insistence successful a 2022 BBC interrogation that the task was "100,000% moving", nary important operation followed the archetypal motorboat ceremony.

Now the Senegalese authorities has confirmed what galore suspected - the task had stalled beyond recovery. Officials cited a deficiency of backing and halted operation efforts arsenic cardinal reasons for the decision.

Although Akon City arsenic it was primitively imagined has been shelved, the authorities says it is present moving with Akon connected a much "realistic" improvement task for the aforesaid site.

The onshore adjacent Mbodiène remains of precocious strategical value, particularly with the 2026 Youth Olympic Games approaching and accrued tourism enactment expected.