A shadow of doubt has been cast upon the $6 billion infrastructure project in Senegal where singer-turned-businessman, Akon, plans to create the futuristic city, dubbed “real life Wakanda”.
We brought you the story about Akon’s plan to create a $6 billion “crypto city” in his home country of Senegal back in January. And we got pretty excited about the idea of a “Wakanda-esque” futuristic city that could lead the world in its adoption of technologies that will define the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Normally, when things seem too good to be true, they are.
Senegal barely made it to the First Industrial Revolution and the villagers driving horse carts on unpaved roads have met Akon’s plans with skepticism. Questions about land rights, financing and feasibility remain unanswered.
“Akon came to meet us. He said he’ll do this. It could be real or not real — but I think it’s real,” Magueye Ndao, mayor of Ngueniene, the municipality containing Mbodiene and other villages where Akon City will be built, told TimesLIVE. “We welcome this project with open arms and pray that everything Akon told us will be realised.”
However, it appears that Akon, who spent part of his childhood in Senegal before moving to the United States, may have bitten off a bit more than he can chew. Unfortunately, constructing an entire district is far more expensive and complicated than the Akon Lighting Africa initiative – a solar power project launched in 2014 which was his first philanthropic venture.
$4 billion of the $6 billion required to build the real life Wakanda in Senegal was secured by Akon through investors, including Kenyan businessman Julius Mwale, said Paul Martin, director of the project at KE International, an engineering and infrastructure consulting firm. No further details in other investors have been released as of yet.
However, it seems like the residents in the area are not being engaged with, bringing feasibility studies and other necessary procedures under question. There are concerns over the disconnect between Western and Senegalese culture, as well as how the new urban development could affect other businesses in the region and the consequences that it could have for regular workers.
“The studies that were done were not in collaboration with the commune of Ngueniene,” said Pape Massamba Thiaw, a municipal councillor and president of the youth commission for Ngueniene. “I don’t want us to be just day labourers. We have to be among the managers.
“Since the project is not 100% led by the commune of Ngueniene, there are bound to be fears and worries about it,” Thiaw told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Up until now there have been no problems. The problems will arise the moment his promises are not kept.”
For example, there have been issues regarding land rights. By 2014, $3.35 million was owed to 385 people for a total of 504 hectares of land in Mbodiene and 110 hectares in nearby Pointe Sarene which they ceded to the government way back in 2009.
Initially, Akon City will be build on 55 hectares in its first phase, but it will eventually have to cover 2,000 acres (800 hectares).
“We have paid one part about Pointe Sarene. We have tried to prioritise so that the Mbodiene villagers are paid,” said Aliou Sow, Director-General of the Senegalese Coastal and Tourist Zones Development and Promotion Company (SAPCO), the state agency leading the project, adding that the payments are “in the process of regularisation”.
“If history is any guide, they will most likely be let down,” said Xavier Ricou, an architect and former director at APIX, Senegal’s agency for promoting investment and major projects.
However, lead architect, Hussein Bakri, who is Lebanese and based in Dubai, is optimistic about the project and believes that its just a matter of taking on the right frame of mind – believing that it’s possible for Akon to build a real life Wakanda in Senegal will take the project forward.
Responding to criticism that his futuristically designed buildings, which includes parking spaces for flying cars, he said, “if that was happening in Dubai you would say, OK well that’s a new phase of architecture.”
“Why not in Africa?”
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