In 2018, Akon, American born singer of Senegalese origin, announced plans for a futuristic African city and it was expected to cost $6 billions.
Akon had imagined an Africa that was so beautiful that anyone can make it without having to work harder. He left behind his successful career as a singer in the United States to start this project, gathering so much funds all over the world to make this dream a reality.
Akon saw a place where people wouldn’t have to die in poorly managed hospitals. A place where education didn’t have to be a privilege. A place with functioning roads, energy, security, and technology. He imagined a city with a hospital, a shopping mall, schools, a police station, a waste management center, and a solar plant, all built by the end of 2023, that is about two years ago. There was even a new digital currency for it, Akon.
At the time, it all sounded like a utopian dream, but it didn’t matter. People believed. The idea made people proud, made them feel something they hadn’t felt in a long time, was about to happen in their land, through their son, and they trusted him, all of them.
But today, six years later, if you go to the 800-hectare piece of land in Mbodiene, Senegal, where this city was supposed to rise, you won’t find a hospital. You won’t find roads. You won’t find the solar plant or even a light. You will find one, unfinished reception building, some construction materials and goats and cows grazing through the dry grass. The rest you will find there is just the land, itself, covered in dry grass.
The failure of this dream city says more than words can. The city never came. You know that one feels? The people never came. The dream, once so powerful, just disappeared. Nobody talks about it anymore. And if they do, it is often when they have nothing important to talk about. Some call it a scam; others call it a failed idea. Maybe it is both. Maybe it is neither. But the truth is, something happened here, something sad, something that lives not just in Senegalese soil but also in all of us.
Because what happened to Akon City is not just about the dream gone wrong. It is about how dreams are born, and how they die. Akon didn’t have to do this. He was already famous, already successful. He could have spent the rest of his life touring, singing, and making a lot of money in the process just like other celebrities.
But he wanted more. He wanted to build something that would outlive him. Something for his people. And maybe, in that, he underestimated how cruel and complicated the real world can be. How bureaucracy kills vision. How governments say yes but act no.
How donors smile in meetings and disappear when it is time to pay and how fame cannot build a city.
This is not even the end, because we haven’t started yet. In the west, where some of the richest tech billionaires in the world live, people are often overwhelmed by what they call “first world problems.
The Uber ride took too long. The Wi-Fi is slow. The iPhone battery drains too fast. The avocado isn’t ripe enough. The AC isn’t cold enough. The hotel bed is too soft.
These complaints seem small, even silly but they are real to those who live in comfort and comfort, like poverty, it doesn’t stay forever. What you see every day becomes your reality. In New York or London or Los Angeles, people battle stress over meetings and deadlines and weight loss. In Senegal and in Africa in general, people waited for a promised city that never came.
You see, people in the first world are often sold the idea that anything is possible if you dream big and work hard. It IS the core of the American dream. Build. Grow. Innovate. Win. But Akon tried that. He dreamed. He had fame. He had connections.
He had the story and still, it didn’t work. That says something painful. That sometimes, even the most well-intentioned dreams collapse under the weight of systems, politics, empty promises, and just plain reality.
There is something we should learn about this story. Everyone, regardless of their location or class, knows what it feels like to dream. Everyone knows what it feels like to believe in something, to put your whole soul into an idea, and then watch it stand or fall apart or sadly disappear.
So maybe Akon City isn’t just a Senegalese or African problem. Maybe it is a global one, because while people struggle down there to eat twice per day, people in London cry over loneliness in their luxury flats. People in San Francisco struggle with depression in million-dollar apartments.
People in Paris look at their reflections and feel ugly, even in designer clothes. These are not the same problems but they all hurt. They all say the same truth, that life is hard, even when it looks good from the outside.
This brings us back to Akon. Maybe he forgot that changing the world requires more than money and ambition. Maybe he trusted too easily. Maybe he believed that Africa would rise quickly if just one person tried hard enough. But Africa is not a joke. It is a place with wounds that need time to heal, corrupt systems, and leaders who smile in photos but steal in secret.
Maybe it is okay that Akon City didn’t happen. Maybe the dream was too big for this moment. But dreams are not wasted just because they fail. Sometimes, the act of dreaming is powerful enough. It changes things. Maybe someone, somewhere, was changed forever just by hearing that someone wanted to build something good in Africa.
We shouldn’t laugh at the failed dream. We should mourn it instead. Because the world needs people who dare to imagine more. Even if they fall. Even if they build nothing. Even if their dreams turn into nothing because somewhere between the failed city in Senegal and the stressed-out luxury of Silicon Valley, there is a lesson about being human.
About wanting more, and sometimes healing. We are all trying to build something whether it is a billion-dollar city, a family, a career, a new life, or just a little peace in our minds and often, things fall apart.
Akon may never finish his city or maybe he will, someday. But whether he does or doesn’t, the real value was not in the building. It was in courage. The bravery to believe that something better is possible.
The story of Akon City reminds us that broken dreams still have meaning, that the heart that dares to dream, even if it never succeeds, is still more beautiful than the one that never tries.
So if your dream fails, cry over it and start all over again. Don’t ever be ashamed of it because, in the end, nothing is really going to make more sense than something you have tried, even those that didn’t work.
Thanks for reading.