In 2018, Akon announced a cryptocurrency called Akoin and plans for a $6 billion Wakanda-style metropolis in his native country Senegal. Now, seven years later, Senegal has confirmed that the city will not be happening.
"The Akon City project no longer exists," Serigne Mamadou Mboup, the head of Senegal's tourism development body, Sapco, told the BBC, adding, "Fortunately, an agreement has been reached between Sapco and the entrepreneur Alioune Badara Thiam [aka Akon]. What he's preparing with us is a realistic project, which Sapco will fully support."
The original plans consisted of a hospital, a shopping mall, a school, a police station, a waste center, and a solar plant, all by the end of 2023. That did not happen, obviously.
The whole Akoin thing hasn't been going too well either. Over the years the cryptocurrency has struggled to repay its investors. In 2022 the singer admitted, "It wasn't being managed properly — I take full responsibility for that."
