<
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/10/25/senegal-cryptocurrency-akon-city-akoin/>
"American R&B singer Aliaune Thiam, professionally known as Akon, has long
wanted to help Senegal, the country he grew up in. He started Akon Lighting
Africa in 2014 to install cheap Chinese solar-powered lighting systems across
the continent. He hoped to do something more significant for Senegal. But how
to fund it?
The answer turned out to be the same one adopted by a growing number of
governments and entrepreneurs: a mixture of cryptocurrency and urban planning.
It’s a combination that offers the promise of development without any of the
tricky details—and which tends to turn out to be little more than vaporware.
There was Bitcoin City in El Salvador, but also Painted Rock in Nevada, Satoshi
Island in Vanuatu, Cryptoland in Fiji, or the Crypto-Kingdom of Bitcointopia in
Utah.
In 2018, Akon announced a new cryptocurrency, to be called “akoin.” Akoin would
enable Africans to, as the singer put it at a launch event, “advance themselves
independent of the government”—in some manner. Most importantly, akoin would
fund the creation of Akon City, an advanced planned city to be built in
Senegal. Akon announced akoin and Akon City at the Cannes Lions Festival in
June 2018. Akon said in November of that year that he had “everything planned
out” for the city. But both Akon City and the akoin token remained only ideas
for many months.
Akon was interested by the promises of cryptocurrency—specifically, free money
by some unclear mechanism—but he was not up on the details of its technical or
financial issues: “I come with the concepts and let the geeks figure it out,”
he said. The akoin team featured initial coin offering (ICO) entrepreneurs such
as Lynn Liss of ICO Impact and Crystal Rose Pierce.
The akoin cryptocurrency was pre-sold in a 2019 crypto token offering called
“token of appreciation.” Each dollar “donation” would give you up to four
tokens which would convert to akoin.
Akoin had not launched in Senegal at the time, despite billboards across the
country. The West African CFA franc is the only legal currency in Senegal;
BCEAO, the central bank, warned that akoin could not be used as a currency in
the country.
Akoin promised all manner of functionality—special akoin wallet software,
direct exchange with other cryptocurrencies or with cellphone minutes, an
application marketplace, various “building blocks for entrepreneurship.” None
of this was ever implemented."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
