This is all stuff based on my amateur reading of history. So, if you're not interested in history, you won't be interested in this. The suggestions here would generally make sub-Saharan Africa both a harder start and a more distinctive one.
There are a lot of different suggestions/ideas in here.
Governments
EU currently represents the sub-Saharan polities as following the same rules as European polities of the EU period. But they did not historically behave like their European counterparts. They did a lot of raiding, some of them had a lot of problems with succession wars and internal stability, and they generally had problems controlling vast areas of land.
A bit of the game's history: originally "tribal" governments included what are now the "Steppe Nomads" of Asia and the "Native Councils" of North America (which used to be represented by 'Tribal Democracies'), and the special rules that were developed for the Steppe Nomads applied to all the "tribal" governments except the Tribal Democracies. There also used to be extremely punitive penalties for tribal governments. Those rules have almost all been removed, and now "tribal" governments are basically to normal governments with poor modifiers. That's not very interesting.
I'd like to see bigger differences between the "tribal" government types. One - I'm not sure what to call it - would represent realms like Songhai, Kanem-Borno, and maybe Mali. They'd borrow many, perhaps all, of the special rules for Steppe Nomads. Capturing provinces would be easy for them, but those provinces would be as easily lost. 'Tribal Federations' might represent the Tuareg, maybe the Mossi, and others that represent conglomerates of many small groups. They would raid like the Songhai and have minimum autonomy. 'Tribal kingdoms' might apply mostly to places outside of west Africa, such as some of the native states of the Andes, and wouldn't have many special rules. There could also be tribal city states, basically proto-merchant republics, for example the Hausa and Swahili city states and Djenne and Benin. These would have trading bonuses and no particular succession problems but considerable penalties for expanding beyond a limited size.
Songhai is currently AFAIK the only starting country in western Africa that doesn't have a "tribal" government, but I don't think that it's exceptional, or radically different from Mali or Kanem-Borno. Later states such as 18th Century Ashanti wouldn't be "tribal".
One polity that was different was the polity based in Timbuktu that formed after Morocco first conquered much of Songhai, then, 20 years later, lost control of their forces on the south side of the Sahara. This state could be modelled as a colonial nation.
Trade
Gold in western (and southern) Africa acted like a standard trade good. Timbuktu's status as a center of trade was in large part due to the gold trade going through it. Back then, for something to be worth trading across the Sahara, a good needed to either be able to carry itself across the Sahara, such as slaves (northbound) or warhorses (southbound), of it had to be really valuable per unit weight, such as gold (northbound), salt, or hand-copied books before the invention of the printing press. There was no way it was going to be profitable to carry something like iron, much less grain, across the Sahara. So I'd make a "tradable gold" trade good that works like normal trade goods - no inflation, lots of value for your local center of trade. If the province with the gold trade good gets taken over by a Western tech group nation, it can turn into a regular gold-type gold province.
If a country conquered a province with people of a different culture and religion, they would take a lot of slaves there. A country's own culture provinces wouldn't be major sources of slaves. So I'd make slaves a dynamic trade good, with events to change slave provinces if they become right-culture or, for non-pagan religions, right-religion. Conversely, non-gold provinces conquered by foreign cultures would become slave provinces.
I'd also change the trade connections of the Katsina trade node: I'd give it an outgoing connection to the ivory_coast trade node, but I'd delete its outgoing connection to the Timbuktu trade node. Historically Timbuktu and the Hausa cities such as Katsina and Kano were competitors for the cross-Sahara trade, and the trans-Sahara trade competed with the European coastal route, for both the gold and the slaves exported from West Africa. I'm tempted to put a third trade node in there, in the middle where Ashanti and Oyo are, with outgoing routes to Timbuktu, Katsina, and Ivory_Coast: I think that would model things best but the area probably doesn't warrent that many trade nodes.
(And I'd make a Kongo trade node that's a source, and has one outgoing link, to ivory_coast, so that Kongo can place merchants without being able to see the ivory_coast on their map. It could even be an inland trade center: I don't know whether that would work best.)
Cultures
First, the Tuareg should not be part of the Sahelian culture group. The sources I've read have all described them as a branch of the Berbers. So, if they're going to be in anybody else's culture group, they should be in the Maghrebi culture group. But I really think they deserve their own culture group. That would reflect that as people supremely adapted for desert life, it would be hard for anyone else to conquer them and hard for them to conquer anyone else.
Historically, the Mossi and Songhai had trouble conquering others on a lasting basis and others had trouble conquering them on a lasting basis, so I'd make each of them their own culture group. Mali conquered Songhai, and after a while the Songhai successfully broke away. Then the Songhai captured Mande territory, and when their government collapsed those Mande areas promptly broke away (leaving Songhai with their heartland downriver of Gao.) There was never, to my knowledge, any overlap between Mossi polities and Yoruba ones. However, IIRC (it's been a couple of years) I have seen Dagomba referenced as one of the Mossi kingdoms, so they could be part of a Mossi culture group.
I'd still want to split up the Sahelian group after this. I'd make the Hausa their own culture group, with Sokoto as the union tag, including cultures like the Kanawa and the Katsinawa (since Hausaland remained split into different polities right up to the emergence of the Sokoto Caliphate at the very end of the EU period). I'd give the Kanuri and the Bilala their own culture group, since they never conquered any of the other lands on a lasting basis and none of the other lands conquered them. The Fulani were historically associated with both the "Senegambians" and the Hausa, although they also had their animosities with both. So that could reasonably be one culture group (the Hausa including the Senegambians and the Fulani), or two, or three. (The Nigerian Fulani, and even the Kanuri and Bilala, are becoming one culture with the Hausa in modern Nigeria, but that's a modern thing.)
Finally, I'd give Benin their own culture, the Edo, within the Yoruba culture group. My understanding is that both Benin and the Yoruba recognized each other as related to each other but not the same.
There are a lot of different suggestions/ideas in here.
Governments
EU currently represents the sub-Saharan polities as following the same rules as European polities of the EU period. But they did not historically behave like their European counterparts. They did a lot of raiding, some of them had a lot of problems with succession wars and internal stability, and they generally had problems controlling vast areas of land.
A bit of the game's history: originally "tribal" governments included what are now the "Steppe Nomads" of Asia and the "Native Councils" of North America (which used to be represented by 'Tribal Democracies'), and the special rules that were developed for the Steppe Nomads applied to all the "tribal" governments except the Tribal Democracies. There also used to be extremely punitive penalties for tribal governments. Those rules have almost all been removed, and now "tribal" governments are basically to normal governments with poor modifiers. That's not very interesting.
I'd like to see bigger differences between the "tribal" government types. One - I'm not sure what to call it - would represent realms like Songhai, Kanem-Borno, and maybe Mali. They'd borrow many, perhaps all, of the special rules for Steppe Nomads. Capturing provinces would be easy for them, but those provinces would be as easily lost. 'Tribal Federations' might represent the Tuareg, maybe the Mossi, and others that represent conglomerates of many small groups. They would raid like the Songhai and have minimum autonomy. 'Tribal kingdoms' might apply mostly to places outside of west Africa, such as some of the native states of the Andes, and wouldn't have many special rules. There could also be tribal city states, basically proto-merchant republics, for example the Hausa and Swahili city states and Djenne and Benin. These would have trading bonuses and no particular succession problems but considerable penalties for expanding beyond a limited size.
Songhai is currently AFAIK the only starting country in western Africa that doesn't have a "tribal" government, but I don't think that it's exceptional, or radically different from Mali or Kanem-Borno. Later states such as 18th Century Ashanti wouldn't be "tribal".
One polity that was different was the polity based in Timbuktu that formed after Morocco first conquered much of Songhai, then, 20 years later, lost control of their forces on the south side of the Sahara. This state could be modelled as a colonial nation.
Trade
Gold in western (and southern) Africa acted like a standard trade good. Timbuktu's status as a center of trade was in large part due to the gold trade going through it. Back then, for something to be worth trading across the Sahara, a good needed to either be able to carry itself across the Sahara, such as slaves (northbound) or warhorses (southbound), of it had to be really valuable per unit weight, such as gold (northbound), salt, or hand-copied books before the invention of the printing press. There was no way it was going to be profitable to carry something like iron, much less grain, across the Sahara. So I'd make a "tradable gold" trade good that works like normal trade goods - no inflation, lots of value for your local center of trade. If the province with the gold trade good gets taken over by a Western tech group nation, it can turn into a regular gold-type gold province.
If a country conquered a province with people of a different culture and religion, they would take a lot of slaves there. A country's own culture provinces wouldn't be major sources of slaves. So I'd make slaves a dynamic trade good, with events to change slave provinces if they become right-culture or, for non-pagan religions, right-religion. Conversely, non-gold provinces conquered by foreign cultures would become slave provinces.
I'd also change the trade connections of the Katsina trade node: I'd give it an outgoing connection to the ivory_coast trade node, but I'd delete its outgoing connection to the Timbuktu trade node. Historically Timbuktu and the Hausa cities such as Katsina and Kano were competitors for the cross-Sahara trade, and the trans-Sahara trade competed with the European coastal route, for both the gold and the slaves exported from West Africa. I'm tempted to put a third trade node in there, in the middle where Ashanti and Oyo are, with outgoing routes to Timbuktu, Katsina, and Ivory_Coast: I think that would model things best but the area probably doesn't warrent that many trade nodes.
(And I'd make a Kongo trade node that's a source, and has one outgoing link, to ivory_coast, so that Kongo can place merchants without being able to see the ivory_coast on their map. It could even be an inland trade center: I don't know whether that would work best.)
Cultures
First, the Tuareg should not be part of the Sahelian culture group. The sources I've read have all described them as a branch of the Berbers. So, if they're going to be in anybody else's culture group, they should be in the Maghrebi culture group. But I really think they deserve their own culture group. That would reflect that as people supremely adapted for desert life, it would be hard for anyone else to conquer them and hard for them to conquer anyone else.
Historically, the Mossi and Songhai had trouble conquering others on a lasting basis and others had trouble conquering them on a lasting basis, so I'd make each of them their own culture group. Mali conquered Songhai, and after a while the Songhai successfully broke away. Then the Songhai captured Mande territory, and when their government collapsed those Mande areas promptly broke away (leaving Songhai with their heartland downriver of Gao.) There was never, to my knowledge, any overlap between Mossi polities and Yoruba ones. However, IIRC (it's been a couple of years) I have seen Dagomba referenced as one of the Mossi kingdoms, so they could be part of a Mossi culture group.
I'd still want to split up the Sahelian group after this. I'd make the Hausa their own culture group, with Sokoto as the union tag, including cultures like the Kanawa and the Katsinawa (since Hausaland remained split into different polities right up to the emergence of the Sokoto Caliphate at the very end of the EU period). I'd give the Kanuri and the Bilala their own culture group, since they never conquered any of the other lands on a lasting basis and none of the other lands conquered them. The Fulani were historically associated with both the "Senegambians" and the Hausa, although they also had their animosities with both. So that could reasonably be one culture group (the Hausa including the Senegambians and the Fulani), or two, or three. (The Nigerian Fulani, and even the Kanuri and Bilala, are becoming one culture with the Hausa in modern Nigeria, but that's a modern thing.)
Finally, I'd give Benin their own culture, the Edo, within the Yoruba culture group. My understanding is that both Benin and the Yoruba recognized each other as related to each other but not the same.
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