since the inauguration of this presumably pharaonic construction site, the wind has begun to change, as nothing has materialised. As time goes by, social media has been dominated by ironic and sometimes scathing remarks that follow one another in a loop, coming from the four corners of the world. “What is Akon City?” Could the city dreamed up by the artist be in reality “a scam”, “a sham”, or “a hoax”?
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It is worth noting that the project’s designer, who named the city after himself, is not just anyone. Born to Senegalese parents, Alioune Badara Thiam was born in the US, in Saint-Louis (Missouri), in April 1973, before returning to live in his parents’ country of origin.
“I was that little boy who played football barefoot in his sandy village, far from civilisation,” the singer told us during a long interview by video conference from Atlanta. When he returned to the US at the age of seven, he was amazed to discover a modern world that he thought he would “never see outside of television”. “I always wanted this for my country,” he says.
He earned fame in his native country during the early 2000s, with pop and R’n’B hits that topped the charts, such as Smack That and Locked Up. But the featured artist on the song I Just Had Sexhas not forgotten his childhood dream: “To create something for Africa that will enable it to develop by itself.”
Electrifying Africa with solar energy
In the mid-2010s, the world-famous artist, who is also a producer and businessman in the US, made his presence felt in a completely different area. As an entrepreneur and philanthropist, Akon now plans to bring his fame, list of contacts and financial clout to the continent. “I put my music career on hold to help rebuild Africa,” he says simply.
In 2014, he launched the Akon Lighting Africa project, which plans to bring electricity to 600 million Africans in 40 countries thanks to solar energy, with two Senegalese and Malian partners, Thione Niang and Samba Bathily.
Then, at the beginning of 2018, Akon announced two very ambitious projects with great fanfare. The first one was the forthcoming introduction on the market of Akoin, a crypto-currency that is supposed to allow Africans to gain full monetary sovereignty.
The second one was the construction of an ambitious new city in Senegal, which would be “intelligent”, “eco-responsible” and powered by solar energy, where health, education, culture, leisure and employment would be top priorities.
“I see Akon City as the incarnation of a new Africa driven by youth,” the artist said at the time. “An Africa that surprises itself with a city whose architecture alone is unprecedented. Where people say: ‘Wow! But that’s impossible in Africa! You only see that in Dubai or the Middle East. Nobody would be surprised if a city like this was built in Saudi Arabia. But it is also possible in Africa, and that is what I hope to demonstrate. Akon City is a milestone, an experiment where this new state of mind will take root.”
According to its designer, Akon City would eventually attract tens of thousands of residents, businesses and tourists, many of whom would flock to the seaside Petite-Côte area. The buzz was on.
Macky Sall is seduced
Akon was received in Dakar by Sarr, then minister of tourism and air transport, two years later in January 2020. Seduced by the project, Sall instructed the state services to facilitate it as much as possible. Two leases were then signed between the musician and the Société d’Aménagement et de Promotion des Côtes et Zones Touristiques du Sénégal (SAPCO), an entity dependent on the Ministry of Tourism.
The land coveted by Akon, which was entrusted to SAPCO in 2009 by presidential decree, is part of a larger 500-hectare plot of land that constitutes a national plan to develop the Petite-Côte. In 2014, 385 inhabitants of Mbodiène village were expropriated and compensated.
At the time, an agreement was reached between the municipal team and SAPCO. “We agreed on a list of proposals: the space between the lagoon and the ocean should remain intact and the people would receive training in hotel management so that they could work in the tourist structures that would be set up. We even talked about building a tourism school on the spot,” says an adviser to Magueye Ndao, the former mayor of Mbodiène.
When he presented a first draft of Akon City to the Senegalese authorities, Sall initially supported the singer. “This new city was presented as a structuring project, which was to be a development ramp for Senegal”, summarises a presidential adviser.
“Akon City was blessed by the President of the Republic”, says Aliou Sow, SAPCO director-general from 2018 to 2021 and as such a signatory of the two leases to be concluded with the artist. Sow was nonetheless sceptical. “At the time, we had no detailed technical or financial file, only a four-minute video clip. When the foundation stone was laid 15 months later, I said that I thought it was premature,” he says.
Baptising the building site
On 31 August 2020, when Covid-19 restrictions were largely lifted in Senegal, Akon returned to the country. He took part in the official ceremony in Mbodiène, marking the naming of the Akon City Construction site. Akon was accompanied by Lebanese architect Hussein Bakri, from the Dubai-based BAD Consult firm.
Sarr was also present for the occasion. “When I’m in the United States, I meet a lot of African-Americans who don’t really understand their culture,” says the singer. “So I wanted to build a city that would give them the motivation to reconnect with their roots.”
Bakri was recommended to him by Senegalese designer Diène Marcel Diagne, who was working on a luxury residential project in the new town of Diamniadio. “Akon had expressed his interest in the Diamniadio Lake City entertainment centre and we gave him credit, given his status as an artist and entrepreneur. We even had him meet with our architect in our Dubai office to show him the project in detail, but we did not think it was appropriate to follow up on his proposal,” Diagne told us.
But the designer now claims that Thiam used his plans to launch Akon City. “When we saw that his project was illustrated using images of our model, we were stunned,” says Diagne, who says that he didn’t end up filing a complaint despite his lawyers’ recommendations.
“It was a simple misunderstanding,” Akon soberly replies. “When I announced the Akon City project, people assumed it was his because I had already contributed to the promotion of Diamniadio Lake City. And that caused some confusion.”
Pan-Africanism
The momentum seemed to be there, as work was supposed to start in early 2021. Under the terms of the agreement signed with SAPCO in January 2020, the first part of Akon City was supposed to be delivered by the end of 2023 and the city completed by 2029. “Akon has secured two leases. One for a 50-hectare plot of land and the other for an adjoining 5-hectare plot,” says SAPCO’s former director-general Sow.
Akon said at the time that KE International, a major US investment fund, had managed to quickly raise $4bn out of the $6bn needed to finance the project. To simulate the American-Senegalese star’s urban dream, a 3D clip was meanwhile produced by BAD Consult and massively distributed on YouTube.
One walks between curved buildings, as if they were made of marshmallow; one flies over green spaces and a marina worthy of an island for billionaires nestled in the Caribbean; one drives on perfectly paved roads lined with coconut trees… Around the city’s mainland and the three islands that border it, a vast body of water completes the picture, as if the Mbodiène lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean had merged into one giant lake.
The designers of the “futuristic” city, divided into thematic districts with the cult of pan-Africanism as a common denominator, announce a long list of future achievements: an ultramodern 200-bed hospital, a film studio, a district devoted to technology, an “African village”, a shopping centre, office and residential buildings, restaurants, etc.
In Dakar, although Akon City SARL has been created to serve as a relay for the company, no team has yet been recruited to supervise the construction site, which promises to be titanic. Mbacké Dioum – presented as Akon’s “aide de camp”, “right-hand man” and “manager” in Senegal – seems to be the sole man in charge of the project, according to many of our interviewees.
But this renowned music producer, who has lived in the US for a long time, remains elusive when it comes to talking about Akon City. On two occasions, he declined our requests for an interview.
In the national and international media, the futuristic city returned to oblivion for a while. But in November 2022, the singer was called to order by his government partners. The Senegalese daily newspaper Libération revealed that SAPCO had sent him a formal notice. It stated that, despite there being just one year before the 2023 deadline, the Akon City project had not progressed an iota, which could lead to the Senegalese authorities unilaterally terminating the agreement.
Akon’s dream is in trouble; will there be a quick intervention?
By Africa report!
