André Álvares de Almada

André Álvares de Almada (fl. 16th and 17th centuries) was a Cape Verdean writer, trader and explorer of mestiço (mixed) descent. He was one of the first recorded Cape Verdean writers.

Biography André Álvares de Almada was born on the island of Santiago circa 1550 to the captain Ciprião Álvares de Almada and a mother likely of mixed Portuguese and African descent. He was involved in trading activities on the West African coast between at least the 1560s and 1580s

In 1578, he met with the Mali gold traders along the Gambia River.

In 1598, he was knighted as a Knight of the Order of Christ. Almada died sometime after 1603, and one of his sons became the captain of Cacheu. A summary, however, was created by Jesuit missionaries in Cape Verde in 1605 and soon spread and was translated. This profoundly impacted later authors up to the 19th century, who often borrowed Almada's ethnographic information for the entire area between Senegal and Sierra Leone without analyzing it or updating it.