[cwackerfuss]

Akon has been an active entrepreneur in Africa for a while now. He runs a solar company that provides electricity and jobs to Africans who would otherwise just be dependent on charitable giving. This project involving Akoin started in 2018 and he's been working closely with Senegal leadership to make it a success.

On the other hand, have you seen Will.i.am's smart watch? It's... Horrible https://youtu.be/5BRbMatqN3c

[nexthash]

It seems building "smart cities" is a trend now... Saudi Arabia started one, Elon Musk wants to build something like that on Mars, and there's all these ideas of floating cities being passed around. I don't know much about Akon's entrepreneurial record but "smart futuristic city powered by a blockchain in Africa" seems like a huge and mostly imaginary leap from "local solar company". You'd be hard-pressed to come up with the cash to build this in America, so doing it in Africa feels like an unrealistic utopian dream disguising a ploy for money.

[bobthepanda]

Smart cities have been a thing for a while, like in China or South Korea.

At least for Songdo in South Korea, it turns out that employers have no interest in rolling the dice on a brand new city with no proven track record, and residents don‘t really want to move to a place with no jobs. Plus cities designed from scratch in ivory towers tend to be very poor places to live nicely.