I was humbled studying this map, feeling really out of my element as I had to work to gain understandings and then felt like I was guessing at a lot of my assumptions. It was helpful to read the article; I needed that written text to support the visual map. The mapmaker used what tools he had in observation and recording to put on paper what he understood about the region. There are minute details which make me think he was basing it on accurate information, but the scale was way off, which might just be a reflection of mapmaker's perspectives at the time. The mapmaker I don't believe was from the area as what he chose to represent seems very Eurocentric. I'm really puzzled about why he would make this map. Who was his audience? In 1375 was mapmaking a respected and scholarly work? Was there a race to be the first to create this kind of product? Did that influence what he chose to include and not include? Seems I have more questions than answers.
You ask such important questions, Jennifer. Clearly, the map maker wrote in many pre-conceived assumptions about who lived in Africa. Looking closer, we can see the central importance of African gold in the imagination of Europeans at the time, and the importance of the king (depicted here in Mansa Musa) as known powerful figure. Clearly, Africa was globally interconnected at the time. It is this quest for gold that Europeans would eventually pursue, and when they realized that the trade in enslaved people was more lucrative than gold, it shifted toward enslavement, ushering in what we know as the transatlantic slave trade. So gold is key here.