The US-Senegalese RnB singer Akon is building a sustainable smart city on 2,000 acres, which is worth around $6 billion. Akon spent a part of his childhood in Senegal and then moved to the US. Now he wants to give back to African people by building a highly sustainable community. On August 31, 2020, Akon laid the first stone together with Senegal’s minister of tourism. One of Akon’s previous projects is Akon Lighting Africa, a project that already provides solar power in 18 different countries in the continent. Akon City will be provided with this solar power as well.
The futuristic city will be built in the mould of Wakanda, the fictional high-tech African nation in the well-known movie Black Panther. Its pay system will be fully based on Akon’s own cryptocurrency named AKoin. AKoin can be used on every smartphone and is said to be convertible into other established cryptocurrencies as well. According to Akon City’s construction company KE international, advanced technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence will be used for job growth.
Akon City will be located about 62 miles from Dakar and only 35 miles from Dakar’s newly built international airport. This smart city will consist of seven districts, including a technology district, education district and a health and safety district. There will also be an artificial-intelligence data center and the technology district will have its own tech park. On top of all the technologies imbedded in the city, it will be built according to the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, encompassing high environment quality buildings.
To top off, in April 2020, AKoin announced that their cryptocurrency will launch in the smart city Mwale Medical and Technology City (MMTC) in Kenia, which is worth $2 billion and is already built for approximately 90%. If crypto-based smart cities will ever be part of the future, Akon will definitely be one of the precursors regarding renewable and futuristic cities.
References
https://akoncity.com
https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/alist/akon-city-building-senegal-renewable-energy-cryptocurrency-a4297966.html
Thank you for this post. This makes me think about Masdar city. It is a planned city project in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates that was supposed to be very an emerging global clean-technology cluster located in what aims to be one of the world’s most sustainable urban development powered by renewable energy. However, it did not succeed due to financial issues and is now on-hold. This project seems very interesting and I hope it will have a better success.