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Topics: Business, Cryptocurrency, Celebrity
Dan Seddon
Topics: Business, Cryptocurrency, Celebrity
'Lonely' singer Akon has pulled the plug on his billion-dollar Senegalese city project.
The 52-year-old first announced plans for this futuristic Wakanda-esque cityscape seven years ago, which was designed to operate on his new cryptocurrency, 'Akoin'.
Reportedly costing $6 billion, Akon City was set to feature a uniquely curved skyscraper but after five years of setbacks, the 800-hectare site based in Mbodiène is still void of any life.
There are no roads, no residential areas, and no power grid to speak of - just an unfinished reception building that will no doubt be bulldozed in the coming months.
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"The Akon City project no longer exists," Serigne Mamadou Mboup, the head of Senegal's tourism development body, Sapco, told the BBC.
"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."
One Senegalese local wasn't best pleased about the project's axing though, commenting: "We were promised jobs and development. Instead, nothing has changed."
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Plans for this Atlantic Coast-hugging space included a hospital, shopping center, school, police station, waste center, and solar plant, which were meant to be up and running by the end of 2023.
Akon told the BBC back in 2022 that the project was '100,000 percent moving', yet construction progress appeared non-existent.
The land itself remains high-value, what with the Youth Olympic Games coming to Senegal next year.
As for the crypto venture, Akon struggled to repay investors over the years, as the man himself admitted 'it wasn't being managed properly'.
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Eyebrows were raised over whether Akoin should even be used as the primary payment method across Akon City, since Senegal uses the CFA franc - regulated and issued by the Central Bank of West African States, which has historically swum against the crypto tide.
UNILAD has contacted representatives of Akon for comment.
This comes after Akon revealed why he'll never alter the lyrics to his sexually explicit tune 'I Wanna Love You', featuring rap royalty Snoop Dogg.
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During an interview with Metro last year, the music star was asked about some of his risqué lyrics in hits dating back to the 00s.
One of those NSFW songs included the aforementioned 2006 hit, in which he sings: "I see you winding and grinding up on that pole / I know you see me looking at you and you already know / I wanna f*** you."
Akon told the publication: "I look at it like it was a part of who I was, and is who I am."
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"I think with time, people will change. With maturity, people will make different types of decisions on what they’re dealing with currently.
He continued: "I would never condone anyone to change their past, because their past is where they make who they are, it’s what makes them who they are today."
"But for the most part, I do love it all, and I feel like the acceptance of what that was, lyrically at that time, was necessary for me to become what I am today. I definitely never regret it at all, no."