Alfred Burdon Ellis (10 January 1852 – 5 March 1894) was a British Army officer and ethnographer, known for his writings on West Africa.
The son of Lieutenant-general Samuel Burdon Ellis and his wife Louisa Drayson, daughter of the governor of Waltham Abbey factory, was born at Bowater House, Woolwich, on 10 January 1852.
[1] Ellis was temporarily employed as civil commandant during the early part of 1874 at Seccondee on the Gold Coast; he was recalled to military duty in May 1874.
In January 1878 he went to act as district commissioner at Keta, and in October and November of that year conducted operations of constabulary against the Anlo people.
[1] In June 1892 Ellis took a punitive expedition to the Tambaka country in the Sierra Leone protectorate (now on the border with Guinea), and captured Tambi.
Directly afterwards he was called to the Gambia to undertake operations which ended in the taking of Toniataba, held by a supporter of Fodi Kabba, who ran a Marabout campaign in the area.
In its course occurred the armed clash at Waiima, Kono District, Sierra Leone when British and French forces fired on each other, causing fatalities.