Senegalese American R&B singer Akon unveiled plans on August 31 to move forward with construction of a futuristic city in Senegal, named after himself. His novel development project will transform a Senegalese farming village by the decade’s end, according to reports. Akon City, as it is called, will be self-powered and environmentally friendly. It will have luxury condos, a beachfront resort, office parks, a university and a hospital, among others. His website indicates that Akon City will set the standard for all future real estate development in Senegal as a country and region as a whole. “I want the buildings to look like real African sculptures that they make in the villages,” Akon, 47, whose full name is Aliaune Damala Badara Akon Thiam, told a masked crowd Monday in the seaside capital, Dakar, where he was to lay the first stone in a cornfield on 2,000 acres of coastal land given to him by the Senegalese government. Akon, who has been talking since 2018 about building a new city in Senegal, said construction work will start early next year. Akon City will run on cryptocurrency called Akoin, Akon said. According to reports, the architect behind the city, Hussein Bakri, said the citys population would eventually reach 300,000. Akon explained he had ran into a lot of African-Americans that didn’t really understand their culture… So I wanted to build a city or a project like this that will give them the motivation to know that there is home back home, he is quoted saying. As you come in from America, or Europe or anywhere in the diaspora, and you feel like you want to visit Africa, we want Senegal to be your first stop.
