The cover design problem for self-publishing African romance by adaeze_writes

I want to talk about cover design because it's something I've been running into and I suspect other writers in similar positions have too. If I were self-publishing a romance novel with a Nigerian setting and Black Nigerian protagonists, and I wanted a cover that reflected that honestly rather than using the kind of abstracted design that sidesteps the question entirely, my options are significantly worse than they would be if I were publishing a novel set in the American South. The stock photography available is thinner. The cover designers who specialize in the genre have a narrower range in their portfolios. This isn't a complaint without a direction. I'm genuinely asking whether anyone has navigated this and found solutions. Do you use a designer who specializes in this space? Commission illustration rather than photography? Make do with design-forward covers that don't show people at all? I've been quoted rates by two designers in the last month who clearly hadn't thought about this problem before and were figuring it out at my expense.