A $5.5 billion project to create a “new New York” in Africa has ended in spectacular failure — ditched by the Chinese developers who refused to include affordable housing as part of their glitzy scheme, according to a report Thursday.

The developers announced their ambitious plans in 2013 to create an “African Manhattan” in a suburb of Johannesburg that would be a bustling city center and home to 100,000 people.

“It will become the future capital of the whole of Africa,” Zendai Property’s chairman Dai Zhikang boasted to the South Morning China Post at the time.

“This will be on par with cities like New York in America or Hong Kong in the Far East. Those cities we just mentioned were there for 100 years. We’re talking about the next 100 years.”

But the developers soon discovered that just because New York is the city that’s so good they named it twice, it doesn’t mean its magic can be recreated elsewhere — and the project has been quietly scrapped, according to The Guardian.

Instead of gleaming skyscrapers and office blocks — as well as tourist-attractions like a theme park and nature reserve — the area is mostly abandoned, the UK paper stated.

Its future is now far less glitzy — with the land now owned by a new company that plans to develop a series of gated communities out of one-bedroom apartments with attached carports, the paper says.

“The sale of the land and failure of the project was never really publicly announced,” University College of London research fellow Frances Brill told The Guardian.

“For many African cities there is a huge gap between their aspirations to be a world class city and the reality for the majority of their population.”

The project appears to have been doomed by African officials insisting on affordable housing — while the developers pushed for high-end luxury units, slowly down planning permission.

“The original plan had healthcare, schools and community centres. It was a self-contained city,” local official Simon van Jaarsveld, who worked on the Zendai proposal, told The Guardian.

“This could be another missed opportunity for Johannesburg if we end up with disconnected, low-density gated communities that are very car-oriented.”