Akon, the rapper-turned-crypto entrepreneur who’s constructing a complete metropolis in his personal identify in Senegal, introduced at the moment that yet one more African metropolis will run on his cryptocurrency, Akoin.
Akoin, which is at the moment in beta and can launch later this yr, will energy the Mwale medical and know-how metropolis (MMTC), a $2 billion science and tech hub in Western Kenya. MMTC is “the Hamptons of New York in Kenya,” based on a 2018 promotional video that describes the imaginative and prescient of its creator, Julius Mwale.
On the middle of town, which homes 35,000, is a 5,000 mattress hospital referred to as Hamptons Hospital. The hospital is surrounded by hundreds of properties, resorts, shops and a 36-hole golf resort. The plan is to transform all the metropolis’s funds techniques, which at the moment course of 50 million transactions annually, in order that they assist Akoin.
Why received to all the trouble? “I wished to create one thing particular for African residents, particularly financially, and provides them a foreign money that they’ll belief and in addition make the most of on a day after day [basis],” Akon, who’s of American and Senegalese descent, informed a Zoom name filled with journalists attending the digital Blockdown 2020 convention.
Akon stated his dream is for Akoin to be “the longer term foreign money for the continent and all of the creating international locations world wide.”
To kick issues off, Akoin, which relies on Stellar, may also energy the $10 billion Akon Metropolis. Building on town began in March 2019, and town is now 85% full, Mwale informed the Zoom name. From there, the sky’s the restrict: “We count on the Akoin platform will solely run for about 70% of Africa,” stated Mwale.
Akon, actual identify Aliaume Damala Badara Akon Thiam, informed journalists from his residence in Atlanta that his aspiration is for Akoin to be “the longer term foreign money for the continent and all of the creating international locations world wide.”
Not now, clearly: smartphone penetration in Kenya is roughly 21%, based on Newzoo’s 2018 International Cellular Market Report, and Senegal’s is 19%, based on its 2015 version. Just some Akoin transactions will be processed although so-called “dumb” telephones.
Though those that “willingly surrendered” their land to Mwale for the development of MMTC are “now nearly millionaires,” based on the promotional video, most Africans gained’t be capable to profit from Akoin.
However “my imaginative and prescient for Akoin is the longer term,” Akon informed Decrypt. “It isn’t so [much] about what’s occurring proper now, as a result of I do know as soon as Akoin is in impact, and we’re transferring it within the areas that we’re transferring in…it’s going to develop very quickly.”
As soon as sufficient folks come on-line, folks will “see how straightforward it’s to navigate inside the system, and clearly that can assist to combine it inside their lives,” he stated. That’ll pace up adoption, Akon stated. However till the vast majority of the continent makes use of smartphones, Akoin’s full performance is reserved for these residing within the Hamptons of Africa.
