I assume that by the Renaissance there would be plenty of Portuguese and Spanish merchants in Western Africa, but I wonder how likely it would be to see someone of European descent in, say, Mali during Mansa Musa's reign.
I wonder how likely it would be to see someone of European descent in, say, Mali during Mansa Musa's reign.
When Mansa Musa went on his Hajj in 1324, he convinced the Andalusi poet Abu Ishaq al-Sahili to travel home to Mali with him. Abu Ishaq went on to become an important architect in Mali who designed the Djinguerber mosque in Timbuktu for emperor Musa.
About 150 years later, another Andalusi named Ali bin Ziyad al-Quti ('the Goth') fled Grenada in 1468 and settled in Goumbou in the Songhai empire. He makes it into the historical record by marrying the sister of emperor Sonni Ali. His most famous descendant was Mahmoud Kati, a major chronicler of the history of Songhai in the 1610s and who mentions his genealogical connection to Ali bin Ziyad.
I think also Mahmoud Kati brags about the high level of learning achieved by scholars at Timbuktu. As part of his brag in the Tarikh al Fattash he says that Qadis (legal scholars/judges) who studied in al-Andalus arrived in Timbuktu and discovered that their level of learning was less than Qadis trained at Timbuktu.
So, there were several instances where prominent individuals from Andalus (now in Spain/Portugal) traveled to Mali and were remembered in the historical record. How many less prominent merchants would have made their way their way from Andalus to Mali or Songhai is harder to say, but seems not unheard of.
Sources
An Andalusan in Mali by John O Hunwick.
Goths in the Land of the Blacks by Albrecht Hofheinz.