J. F. Ade Ajayi, Nigerian historian and academic (born 1929)

Jacob Festus Adeniyi Ajayi, commonly known as J. F. Ade Ajayi, was a Nigerian historian and a member of the Ibadan school, a group of scholars interested in introducing African perspectives to African history and focusing on the internal historical forces that shaped African lives. Ade Ajayi favours the use of historical continuity more often than focusing on events only as powerful agents of change that can move the basic foundations of cultures and mould them into new ones. Instead, he sees many critical events in African life, sometimes as weathering episodes which still leave some parts of the core of Africans intact. He also employs a less passionate style in his works, especially in his early writings, using subtle criticism of controversial issues of the times.