Singer and Rapper Akon is building his own city in his home country of Senegal. The Music star tweeted that the final approval for the city named “Akon Crypto City” has been granted, and the city will become a reality in the near future.
In 2018, Akon revealed his plan to develop a crypto city where digital life will thrive and the power infrastructure will depend solely on solar energy. The city is to be situated on a 2,000-acre land gifted to him by the Senegalese president.
For the last few years, Akon has gone from the man known for his songs, Lonely, Ghetto, locked up etc. to a man trying to provide electricity for 600 million people among other things. The famous musician’s quest for a private city appears to have come from his zeal for a digital environment powered by cleaner energy.
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The singer, born Aliaune Damala Badara, revealed in an interview with Nick Cannon’s radio show Power 106 Los Angeles, that the city is going to be 100% digital currency, and mainly his own “AKoin, while it is powered by solar energy.
“It’s Akon City. It’s all renewable, the Akontainment 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,” he told Cannon.
The city is located five minutes away from the airport and it is close to the Senegalese capital, Dakar. Akon also wants AKoin to go beyond Akon City. He told Cannon that he would want the crypto coin to go international and that it’s something he is enthusiastic about more than the Akon City.
“You might just go to vacation and when you transfer your American dollars into their money, you might just be transferring it into AKoins. That’s the goal,” he said.
The singer has been thrilled by the concept of having a dominant crypto currency that would be acceptable across Africa’s 52 countries and that would stimulate and support youth development, economic stability and create opportunity and inclusion for youth entrepreneurship.
At a time when Africa is deeply in need of a single currency to foster integration, Akon feels that his crypto coin could provide the needed help. Being available in 54 countries so far, the crypto currency is on a mission to create an environment that will trump the hurdles of varying currencies that have posed a challenge to African businesses, especially entrepreneurs who have limited resources when it comes to financial transactions across the continent.
“I think that blockchain and crypto could be the savior for Africa in many ways because it brings the power back to the people… Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology offer a more secure currency that enables people to advance themselves independent of the government,” Akon said at an event held in Cannes France.
He explained that his crypto coin is designed to allow people to do things in a way that government policies or regulations will not hold them down. “It allows the people to utilize it in ways where they can advance themselves and not allow government to do those things that are keeping them down.”
Many have been skeptical about the Akon Crypto City project, but Akon Lighting Africa has shown that the Grammy nominee has what it takes to pull it off. He said: “I come with the concept and let the geeks figure it out.”
The first two years of the Lighting Africa project saw it moved to 17 African countries, where finance was provided for smaller solar panels. The project is said to be available in about 25 countries right now in Africa, and has earned recognition by the UN. Last year, the Lighting Africa Organization secured a $1 billion credit line to push the project further to other African nations yet to be reached.
The Akon Crypto City has become a dream that many can’t wait to see come true.