Senegalese-American musician and record producer Akon is building his own city in Senegal. With the focus on renewable energy and crypocurrency, this new city will be self-sufficient and futuristic.
In a way, you can say that Akon is building his very own Wakanda. The singer is well on his way to set up his own cryptocurrency ‘AKoin’. In addition to that, he vows to bring solar-powered electricity to 600 million people in Africa.
He announced the news last June that he was working on building a “100% crypto-based city”. Apparently, the building is now officially underway. Akon announced on Nick Cannon’s radio show Power 106 Los Angeles that construction has started. On top of that, Akon has named the city in Senegal after himself.
Here’s what he said:
“It’s Akon City. It’s all renewable, the Akon-tainment solar city. A real physical place, it’s going to have a real airport.”
“It’s a 10-year building block so we’re doing it in stages. We started construction in March and stage two is going to be 2025,” Akon continued.
Akon told Cannon that he was in the “impact business”. He added that he wanted to “build a legacy.” According to a statement about AKoin, the city will be built on “2,000 acres of land gifted to Akon from the President of Senegal”.
The city will be a five-minute drive to the airport, plus nearby Dakar. He also said he hoped that AKoin would take off on an international level, saying that it was the project he was “most excited about personally” rather than his namesake city.
He said, “You might just go on vacation and when you transfer your American dollars into their money, you might just be transferring it into AKoins. That’s the goal.”
Page Six reported that at an appearance last June, Akon talked further about cryptocurrency and AKoin. The singer said that blockchain and crypto “could be the saviour for Africa in many ways”.
Also, he responded to technical questions about the blockchain with, “I come with the concepts and let the geeks figure it out.”
According to Arabian Business, Akon also appeared at the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival and criticized other celebrities for what he perceived as badly thought out moves into cryptocurrency.
He said, “I think a lot of the entertainers went with the wave and also the hype of cryptocurrency, not understanding what it was or what it is and I think a lot of them got caught up into the companies that got eventually folded or were scams.”
“That’s just a lack of education in getting into certain things because as an entertainer you find yourself endorsing a lot of products that you don’t do due diligence on,” he finished.
Source: Evening Standard UK
