Chef supérieur, literally 'superior chief', was an official title in French, used by European (notably French and Belgian) colonial authorities to classify native chiefs whose tribal position was thus considered as higher than those of other tribal chief

Tribal chief

A tribal chief is the leader of a tribal society or chiefdom. Tribal societies with social stratification under a single leader emerged in the Neolithic period out of earlier tribal structures with little stratification, and they remained prevalent throughout the Iron Age.In the case of ...

s. There are no fixed rules for correspondence with the usually pre-existent native rapport.

Cases in French colonies

(this list is probably very incomplete)

• in Dahomey
  Dahomey
  Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...
  
   (present Benin) : in Alada
  Alada
  Alada Empresa de Transportes Aéreos is an airline based in Luanda, Angola. Established in 1995, it operates chartered passenger and cargo flights out of Quatro de Fevereiro Airport, Luanda.- Fleet :...
  
  , since 1909, as colonial style of the native dynasty, styled Ajahutonon or Alada hosu after the annexation of their former Fon
  Fon people
  The Fon people, or Fon nu, are a major West African ethnic and linguistic group in the country of Benin, and southwest Nigeria, made up of more than 3,500,000 people. The Fon language is the main language spoken in Southern Benin, and is a member of the Gbe language group...
  
   kingdom
• in Togo
  Togo
  Togo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
  
   : the Togbé Ahuawoto (still of the Lawson family) of Lolan

Source

• WorldStatesmen- passim, see each present country