Akon just unveiled his $6B ‘futuristic’ city in Senegal; reviews are mixed
$6 billion eponymous development project will transform a Senegalese farming village by the decade’s end.“I want the buildings to look like real African sculptures that they make in the villages,” Akon, 47, told a masked crowd Monday in the seaside capital, Dakar.The Senegalese American artist — whose full name is Aliaune Damala Badara Akon Thiam — was in town to lay the first stone in a corn field on 2,000 acres of coastal land given to him by the Senegalese government.Construction, he said, is set to begin early next year.The high-profile visit capped months of increasingly lofty announcements: Akon City will run on cryptocurrency called Akoin, the performer said.