We Wuz Wakanda

Many Marvel fans (children and man-children alike) are still in mourning over the death of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman.  It is in bad taste to mock the dead and, frankly, I had no strong opinions about him while he was alive (unlike the actual Black Panthers, who are seemingly insane).  However, there is something else that just came up in the news which is tangentially related to the fictional country Boseman ruled in the Marvel films.  A real-life Wakanda may be emerging with a musician as its king.

Over the past few years, there have been rumblings about Akon, a musician probably best known for his song “Smack Dat”, wanting to give back to Africa.  Back in 2014, he started something called “Akon Lightening Africa” which provides solar power to various nations in Africa.  His initial goal was 1 million people to get electricity and then to bring electricity to 600 million Africans. 

This electricity project has over 5,000 employees and operates in 14 countries.  In a February 2015 interview, he described the project and made a lot of good points.  He stated that blacks should return to Africa and pursue their collective ethnic interests in their homelands.  He also said some Afrocentric nonsense, but myths are a useful tool to motivate people.  Whether true or false, it Don’t Matter provided it’s inspiring.  Overall, Akon seems to have been successful in this project and that’s to be lauded.

The success of this electricity program motivated him to fixate more on his homeland of Senegal, with his planned “Akon City” project starting in 2018. Much of the designs and the discussions about it were to essentially make it a real-life Wakanda. I’ve seen various interviews and articles about it in the past couple years, but something has always smelled rotten about it.

The plans for the development were just unveiled and it’s bewildering more than inspiring.  All of the buildings look like modern artwork.  It’s a 6-billion-dollar project which has already raised one third of the funds.  They also plan to begin breaking ground soon (possibly 2021).  I’m no architect, but these buildings don’t look like they’d be structurally stable.  It also seems like a project ripe for graft and mismanagement.  The projected city will be somewhere between 135 and 5000 acres and includes hotels, a university, hospitals, a casino, and movie theaters.

The number of buildings they plan to build makes it seem like 6 billion isn’t enough.  Regarding the price of buildings, let’s just look at hotels.  The average cost of building a hotel ranges from $115,000 to 1.5 million per room.  On the low end, that’s 11.5 million but on the high end that alone would be 115 million dollars.  Additionally, universities cost a huge amount of money to build (with one new building at Yale costing 100 million dollars).

It is in Africa, so the price of labor will be lower, but certain things have fixed costs.  Additionally, the odd shape of these buildings indicates that they would probably cost more to build than normal buildings.  Based on the designs and scale, these also will be rather large buildings, which makes the concerns of cutting corners even greater.

I’m not the only one with concerns.  Local architects in Senegal pointed out that the shape of these buildings will be a nightmare on energy costs (requiring far more consumption of Air Conditioning than greener buildings).  The Senegalese also don’t seem to like it, based on interviews with the Associated Press where one said “These shapes could be anywhere: Phoenix, Dubai.”  That criticism makes sense: I’d imagine anyone would feel rather lonely living among these soulless buildings..

This all ties into a plan Akon has spoken about in interviews of bringing Africa together, both with a single government and a single currency (a crypto currency some have called “Akoin”).  This is either another Nigerian prince scam or it’s the type of thing that’ll get him assassinated.  It’s quite reminiscent of Gaddafi’s planned Gold Dinar to unite Africa (which may have been why the US intervened in Libya). 

So, is Akon going to bring about a real life Wakanda right now that will uplift the people of Africa on an even field with the major players in the West and the Orient?  I wish them well, but I think we know the answer.