Akon To Build $6 Billion City In Senegal

Singer Akon is ramping up plans to build a $6billion city in his homeland Senegal, to serve as a home to Africans in the diaspora.

The singer said at a conference on Monday that the cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar city in Mbodiene, an Atlantic Ocean village situated 60 miles from Dakar, Senegal's capital.

Akon said that one of the motivations of this project was a childhood experience, stating that while growing up he “ran into a lot of African-Americans that didn’t really understand their culture."

“So I wanted to build a city or a project like this that will give them the motivation to know that there is a home back home,” he added.

The city dubbed, Akon City, will feature a university, hotels, business and leisure centre, hospitals, movie studios, with designs by architect, Hussein Bakri.

READ ALSO: Mali Coup: EU Condemns Coup Attempt

Akon said, “As you come in from America, or Europe or anywhere in the diaspora, and you feel like you want to visit Africa, we want Senegal to be your first stop.

“We are still talking with partners and investors,” Akon said, adding that local investment “no matter how small or how big."

The singer said that he told the architect that “I need a building that looks like a statue that you can take home… like real African sculptures that they make in the villages.

“The shapes might be weird, but they are African.”

Work on the project will commence early 2021 and the first phase is expected to be finished in 2023.