Kenneth Dike (17 December 1917 – 26 October 1983[1]) was a Nigerian historian and the first Nigerian Vice Chancellor of the nation's premier college, the University of Ibadan. During the Nigerian civil war, he moved to Harvard University, Boston.
He attended Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone and the Universities in Durham and London. During the 1960s, as a member of the University of Ibadan's history department, he played a pioneering role in promoting African leadership of scholarly works published on Africa. As the head of the organizing committee of the First International Africanist conference in Ghana, he sought for a strengthened meticulous non-colonial focused African research, publication of research in various languages including indigenous and foreign, so as to introduce native speakers to history and for people to view African history through a common eye.