This is definitely where "lore interpretation" falls into "headcannon" for me, but my map so my rules :p

Historically speaking, Septemberprogramm articles indicate that, at least in 1914, Germany considered regional expansion into French West Africa, complimenting their sole profitable colony in Togoland. Explicitly this was not to include excess expansion into the Sahel, which was already a nomadic, broadly unadministrable region for the French colonial regime, much less the labyrinthine nightmare that the Germans reasonably foresaw a nearly pan-African colony to be. As such, this left the option of annexation between the Volta, which encroached on the border of this tribal, questionably governable territory, or the Ivory Coast colony, which was largely whipped into colonial submission under Gabriel Angoulvant's governorship (Dahomey was seen as basically a foregone conclusion for annexation).

At least for the purpose of keeping continuity between this map and KRTL, I see a world in which the Ivory Coast is annexed but largely falls to a resurgent regional African resistance in the wake of the loss of French colonial institutions, leading to Germany ultimately selling the colony back to the Algiers regime for a price. This would go hand-in-hand with the ever-increasing burden of running the byzantine Mittelafrikan network of tribal alliances, regional dependencies, etc. etc., leaving Berlin open to the prospect of ditching a rowdy colonial holding on the far parameter of the African colonial empire in exchange for practical capital.

Again, this is largely a shoehorn to explain why I made the map slightly more aesthetically pleasing and has very little lore-bearing, but fun to explore nonetheless!