Maybe you could go with a situation whereby Abu Bakr Keita's supposed discovery of the Americas gets the attention of the Mali empire and it is colonised, but since we are talking about an African civilization it would be more likely for them to just trade with the Americans. A situation whereby a great deal of trade goes on between Mali and the Americans would be like an earlier form of Columbian exchange, with a more African and Islamic dynamic to it. It is possible that the Americas would eventually be colonised by the Malians, and I think that with all the trans oceanic trade going on the colonies would have close ties with the African part of the empire. With Mansa Musa on hajj he will of course spread knowledge of the Americas, which gets the Arabs excited and they all flock to Mali to reach the new world and trade. The natives do have a hard time with old world diseases, but they do eventually build up immunity. Since there is now malaria in the Americas, along with the old world diseases, it is a lot more difficult for the Europeans to colonise it. What are your thoughts on that?
Even if the Abu Bakr legend is true, this POD in 1311 is very late in the game. There isn't enough time for the native population to come back from a 90% collapse. It took two hundred years for European population to recover from the Black Death. By 1492 there probably would be no cities and empires in the new world. Brazil might be off limits to Europeans due to malaria, but outside the tropics the now depopulated Americas would be easy to colonize. Iron making probably wont be transfered in this exchange. New England tribes did not smelt iron after two centuries of English settlement. The Africans might get cassava, beans and corn, but they would get them anyway from the Europeans in the 16th century.
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