Senegal has canceled rap singer Akon’s dream plan to build a $6 billion futuristic smart city. Only one house has been built since 2020. It was inspired by the city in a Black Panther movie, Wakenda
The project, which the American-Senegalese singer announced in 2020, was meant to turn the quiet village of Mbodiène into a high-tech “Wakanda-like” city. Akon was given 136 acres of prime coastal land for the mega project, but five years later, there’s hardly anything to show.
Fed up with the delays, the Senegalese government has now taken back most of the land and replaced the plan with a more realistic $1.2 billion resort and tourism development.
They are letting him build a resort for some unknown reason.
BREAKING!
Akon’s giant Wakanda grift comes to an end.
Rap star Akon’s futuristic, “Wakanda-inspired” pan-African, city in Senegal has officially been abandoned by Senegal, 1,461 days after the ground breaking ceremony.
Senegal just repossessed the 136 acres they gave him. pic.twitter.com/86gSYmjSLh
— National Conservative (@NatCon2022) July 9, 2025
Bloomberg:
That project ‘no longer exists,’ Serigne Mamadou Mboup, head of Sapco-Senegal, the state-owned entity that develops coastal and tourism areas, told L’Agence de presse sénégalaise.
“We are going to build real-life Wakanda as a symbol for what Africa’s future looks like.”
Yikes. pic.twitter.com/INVVJNCj3j
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 9, 2025
Notice the cows. Plenty of cows. No homes, but lots of cows.
Akon first announced construction in 2020 but nothing happened. In 2022, one of Akon’s investors filed a lawsuit against him over a lack of any actual construction. In December 2022, the BBC said there were still no signs of construction, and the site was instead full of cows.
Where will people go now to escape Trump?
Last year, Sapco gave Akon two weeks to begin work on the development or risk forfeiting the land in Mbodiène, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Senegal’s capital, Dakar. Most of the land was reclaimed after Akon missed payments to Sapco.
The government is still inexplicably letting Akon lead the private development of a portion of the land into a smaller luxury resort that will cater to the world’s rich elite. The dream of a futuristic city for Black people is gone, a resort for rich people might be possible.
Akon, a Senegalese-American singer, has retained 8 hectares of land that will form part of a bigger project covering over 500 hectares that Sapco backs.
‘What Akon’s preparing with us is a realistic project, which Sapco will fully support,’ Mboup said.
Akon has since been accused of “Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes” and that his “Wakanda” city was “likely a scam,” according to his former business partner.
NEW: ‘Wakanda’ inspired city in Africa, which was going to become the real-life version of the city from Black Panther, has officially been scrapped.
Phase one of the $6B futuristic ‘Akon city’ was set to open in 2026; however, only a single building was made.
Senegal granted… pic.twitter.com/3ckplX1vSI
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 9, 2025
Akon said he wanted Black Americans to live in his future city to build a new modern continent. People actually invested after this interview?
How did white people screw this up now?
In 2021, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni met with American pop star Akon and agreed to give him 1.6 square miles of land overlooking beautiful Lake Victoria.
Akon says he wants to take Black Americans #BackToAfrica so they can utilize their talents to build up the continent. pic.twitter.com/8vdGSLJcrH
— National Conservative (@NatCon2022) September 6, 2023
It’s so, I don’t know, ugly?
The buildings are ugly and make no sense. They are only shaped that way to not be like what white men have built before. They are far more difficult to build, more difficult to maintain and imagine how complex it is to go to the higher floors…Elevators can go up in a straight line, but at an angle, or worse… Read more »
This is a microcosm of the billions we’ve wasted on Africa over the last 50+ years.