As u/ancientflowers says, this is a big continent. But I think you are victim here of the extent to which African societies writ large have not been well-included in collections of mythology and legend put together by Western authors, for reasons that are depressing and historically long-standing.

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Undoing your impression is a heroic undertaking in its own regard. As a kind of starter--a sort of one-stop shopping trip--may I suggest the Sundiata epic? There are multiple versions of it in print--the D.T. Niane version is quite readable and compact, though it doesn't have some of the rich scholarly commentary of other editions. (The film Keita, Heritage of the Griot, is very watchable and offers a look at the early part of the epic.)

Sundiata is a figure very comparable to many other human culture heroes: he is a child of both spirits and humans, he has a complicated narrative arc for both his childhood and his adulthood. He is affected by prophecy, both good and bad. He's definitely heroic and somewhat superhuman but also like Heracles makes some serious errors in many versions of the epic, sometimes because of the plotting of his enemies, sometimes because of his own weaknesses.

There are many other relevant figures in the history of sub-Saharan cultures. Another place that's relatively accessible and easy to read about is Yoruba religion, which has a number of heroic figures; also Akan spiritual traditions, which include the quite famous figure Anansi, who made the cut for Neil Gaiman's American Gods and has been described in a very large number of publications on mythology. (I'm kind of surprised that someone who claims to have affection for comparative mythology and to have looked into African examples didn't come across Anansi: he's got a high profile!)

As usual, I agree with /u/swarthmoreburke.

He has already brought up the concept of a culture hero, and Sundiata as one example of the category.

In the book Oral Tradition as History Jan Vansina talks quite a bit about culture heroes, and observes that they often occupy the narrative role (he calls it a cliche) of founders of dynasties and bringers of farming, blacksmithing, laws, and other cultural markers.

So, when we look at the oral traditions of pre-colonial societies, we run in to quite a few founder-heroes. For instance, Kintu of Buganda or Gihanga of Rwanda or Kalala Ilunga of the Luba and Cibind Yirung of the Lunda.

Additionally, in this review Vansina relates Hugues Legros' speculation that these cliches of culture heroes inspired emulation from historical individuals. Legros is speaking specifically of Msiri the founder of the Yeke kingdom of Bunkeya, who was born in Nyamwezi territory on the shores of Lake Victoria (in what's now Tanzania), and migrated with numerous musket-armed Nyamwezi elephant hunters to found a new kingdom on the upper reaches of the Lufira river in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Edit- as for reading recommendations, I'd offer The Heart of the Ngoni; Heroes of the African Kingdom of Segu by Harold Courlander and Ousmane Sako, which gives Bamana folklore from what is now the Republic of Mali.

You might also be interested to read David M Gordon's Journal of African History article History on the Luapula Retold which goes into Lunda-Kazembe folklore in the upper Luapula/Lake Mweru area of what is now Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. Part of Gordon's thesis is that as a conquest state, the Lunda elites passed down folklore that asserted the Luapula river as the place where one Lunda prince, Mutanda, murdered another prince Chinyanta. In turn, Chinyanta's son Ng'anga Bilonda avenged the murder of his father and with his mixed Luba/Lunda followers established the kingdom of Kazembe and asserted authority over the autochtonous inhabitants of the region. Later Mwata Kazembes established shrines at the purported location of Chinyanta's murder, and this shrine and the associated legend became a "legitimizing myth" that justified Kazembe authority in the region.