John Rowland Ryle OBE is a British writer, anthropologist, social activist, filmmaker, teacher and publisher, with an interest in the history and culture of Eastern Africa.

[2] His mother, Melody Ryle,[3] née Jackson, was a stalwart of the local Family Planning Association and a noted amateur botanist and gardener.

[8] Ryle also worked as a doorman at the Embassy Club in Bond Street, London, as a roustabout for the Royal American Shows and the Canadian Pacific Railway,[9] as ghost-writer of Mick Jagger's unpublished autobiography,[10][11] and as a travel writer.

[12] In the late 1980s, Ryle was a project officer at the Ford Foundation in Brazil and lived in an Afro-Brazilian community in Salvador da Bahia.

He has been a board member of the Human Rights Watch Africa Division, the Media Development Investment Fund and the scholarly journal African Affairs.