An African immigrant who worked as a nurse’s aide has been crowned king of the Rwenzururu Kingdom, one of seven traditional kingdoms in Uganda banned shortly after independence and recently revived as cultural institutions. While I’ve never been one of those conservatives pining for the return of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I’ve long thought one of the best ways for the artificial, European-designed African states to nurture a sense of legitimacy among the populace is to incorporate traditional forms of authority.

In Botswana, for instance, the House of Chiefs is the advisory body to parliament, with no formal political power but an important role in fostering the state’s legitimacy (it’s no coincidence that Botswana’s one of the few African countries that’s never had a coup or civil war). Though Botswana’s path has been smoothed by the fact that it’s ethnically pretty homogenous, formally incorporating traditional rulers into the modern state structure would seem to be even more important in less-homogenous countries that don’t really have any organic reason for existence and thus command little loyalty from the populace.

Monarchy in Africa may have a bad name because of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, a dictator du jour who crowned himself Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire. It didn’t take, both because the “monarchy” was not rooted in any local, traditional institution, and because Bokassa was a psychopathic cannibal. But instead of these aid groups spreading around cash that just gets stolen, the West would do more of service to Africa if we could help them devise means of joining traditional institutions of government with their modern states.