Cultural design question: Kenya and South Africa

Hi - hopefully this is in the right forum. I’m currently working on a web project for open education materials that will be deployed in Kenya and South Africa (they will each have their own sites but the overall design of the sites will be similar). I am sitting here in Ireland without much experience of the African audience. The site will be mainly content-based and the content will be supplied by various African educators and education groups. My design is pretty skeletal and has to conform to a specific brand (Don’t worry, there will be no visual “Kenya and South Africa” theme coming from someone in Ireland that gets it all wrong). However, I do have leeway with things like thumbnail images and icons. My question is: can any designers from Africa shed some light on anything I should avoid culturally? Or are there certain icons westerners use a lot that don’t work that well for these audiences? Obviously any photos I use will have Africans in them - is there anything to avoid there also? I will mainly be using pics of teachers where there are pics of people. Thanks for any insight!