That's a good budget for a Epiphone, Squier, Ibanez, and other cheaper brands that are still good quality. I'd start with acoustic just so you can learn how to finger and play "clean." Essential, especially if you're learning playing styles as intricate and stylistic as these. It's easy to get into bad playing habits when you're a beginner hiding behind a distorted electric guitar. Believe me.
Definitely have fun with some R&B and Latin grooves, and learn your Blues licks and scales. Get down those core skills of fingering techniques, sliding, and register isolation around tight grooves. This will be a good foundation before you really delve into African grooves and licks.
Theoretically, understanding "polyrythmic" musical structure is also essential to African music. It's essentially what unites and separates all "black" music at it's core from other music. So think about this as you're learning. In African music instruments play rhythmically around each other--with what you play on the off beat being just as important as what you play on beat. Funk music is especially useful in understanding this concept and is a great place to learn from the perspective of black music in the West. When James Brown told his band to play "on the one," and then started writing the best music ever, this is basically what he understood.
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