I can't answer your question exactly, because I'm not too familiar with African "Zionism", which is a bit of a misnomer. To clarify, Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people deserve the right to self-determination in the land of Israel/Palestine. This is a form of nationalism by most definitions, which is concerned with gaining self-governance for a nation of people. So African Zionism is the wrong term. Zionism is Jewish nationalism, and what you're asking about is how Zionism compares to African nationalism.

With that definitional clarification out of the way, and the admission that I don't know much about African nationalism in place, I can still provide you with some information on half of your question, by describing a bit about Zionism.

For the first point, it's true that Jewish Zionists typically believed they would be discriminated against. Theodor Herzl, the founding father of political Zionism posited it as a sort of paradox in Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). In the section on "The Jewish Question", Herzl differentiated between anti-Judaism, which was religious persecution (think "Jews killed Jesus") and "modern anti-Semitism", which he claimed was a reaction to the "emancipation of the Jews". He wrote, in the "Introduction":

The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized—for instance, France—until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis.

Here I think we can draw at least one crucial distinction from what I am well-versed in. African-Americans feared discrimination on the basis of skin color and the disgusting attributes of racism and pseudoscience that had plagued them. The Jewish fear was not necessarily of discrimination because they were regarded as "inferior", but because they were considered different and dangerous. He notes that when they are poor, they become part of the revolutionary "proletariat", and are seen as a threat to leadership. When they attempt to rise, they are targeted as too powerful. The African nationalist movement in the United States at least had no such reason to believe the latter would ever be the case, though there are likely parallels in the former (and I do recall reading the Liberian Declaration of Independence describing the persecution African-Americans faced as a cause for their seeking independence). The similarity you've noted about nativity being discussed is also valid in that regard.

However, it's worth noting some things:

1. Israel was created in the wake of the Holocaust. But it was not populated primarily by Holocaust survivors. Indeed, the population of Israel doubled from 1948-1951 not only because of Holocaust survivors, but because of a wave of Mizrahi Jews, who came from Arab states, who would constitute over 800,000 immigrants before the wave was over (Israel had a population near 620,000 Jews at the end of the 1948 war). Israel's creation was something that had been proposed by Jews who arrived well before the Holocaust, and was done by those Jews. It is true that Jews arrived fleeing persecution and pogroms, for example leaving Russia, or Germany in the 1930s, which has some parallels to the African nationalism experience, but the Holocaust survivors were not a majority of the population. In Liberia, the African-American arrivals also had time before independence was achieved, far more time (and intermixing) than there was for Holocaust survivors before independence.

2. African nationalism gained significant support from slaveholders especially initially, just as Zionism gained some support from key anti-Semites. However, African nationalism's creation of a state did not involve the war Israel's did (it involved far more disorganized skirmishes and fights with those from the "bush"), and it did not involve nearly so similar a situation in terms of great power involvement at the time.

Even so, I can see compelling parallels from the bit I know. Hopefully the Israeli history I've provided can help an expert on Liberia and other African national movements of this sort speak up.

I will say a few words about why Israel is how it is, and its importance to Jews, and compare it to what I can confidently say about Liberia.

On the one hand, it seems interesting that Jews take pride in Israel, travel there, etc.. However, this becomes clearer when we discuss the question of being buried there, as you did. That is the case because Jews have a religious connection to the land. Grave space on the Mount of Olives is sparse and sold at a premium, because of the religious belief that when the messiah comes, the dead will awaken there first. There are numerous sites of great importance to the Jewish tradition, such as the Western (Wailing) Wall, the Temple Mount, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, etc.. This may contrast heavily with the experience of Liberia, which doesn't have much connection to most African-Americans in any way besides being a place discussed for black liberation, and one that was not historically easy to reach or economically powerful.

Which brings me to the second point, of historic power. Israel has benefited in numerous ways from both its position, and the population that made it up. Many Jews who moved to Israel were educated, typically in the West, but fled anti-Semitism. This goes back to the Herzl-ian statement about Jews having the "terrible power of the purse", and the persecution of Jews for being "too" powerful. This education base was beneficial to the state, and that was compounded by most accounts when over a million Soviet Jews fled the collapsing Soviet empire. Well-educated Jews fled to Israel, which has only added to its economic and human capital. This is coupled with Israel's position as a central region in the Middle East and world, and constant threats on all sides for much of its existence, which provided both motivation and an ability to get involved in great power politics (including thus receiving aid from the United States in more recent decades). Liberia, on the other hand, did not have the same ability to recruit educated African-Americans, because the horrors of the slavery system did not ebb and rise in the way anti-Semitism did. That's not to say no Liberian leaders were educated, or people, as they obviously were, and they established numerous organizations and missions to both religiously and generally educate others. But the situations were, of course different, and Liberia didn't begin to receive as much attention or great power involvement until far later. Jewish Zionists also benefited from European connections; people like Chaim Weizmann were notable Jews from European states with connections to a variety of important political leaders. Indeed, even Theodor Herzl sought meetings with leaders of countries like Germany, and Chaim Weizmann's intervention with Truman may have been the biggest reason why Truman was swayed to push for keeping the Negev desert as part of the proposed Jewish state in the UN partition plan.