Lots of things are worthy of admiration. Starting with cultural products. The food is good, the artistic outputs in literature, film/TV, and music is outstanding. In intellectual pursuits, there are some proper giants in the field of humanities scholarship: C.L.R. James in history, Frederick Douglas in philosophy, W.E.B. DuBois and Huey P. Newton in a bit of both.
But for me, the single thing I admire the most is the legacy of African socialism in the 20th century. Guys like Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah, and Julius Nyrere. For me, because of my political beliefs, these guys are heroes. They epitomize the spirit of humanity and progress and justice, they epitomize the words incorruptible and selfless. They were the sorts of visionaries any society would die to have.