William Farquhar Conton (1925, Gambia - July, 2003) was a Sierra Leonean educator, historian and novelist
William Farquhar Conton was born to the union of Cecil Conton (1885-1926) and Olive Conton (née Farquhar) in the Gambia. The Contons and Farquhars were Sierra Leone Creole people of Caribbean origin who settled in Sierra Leone during the late nineteenth century. Cecil Barger Conton had been born in Bermuda to William A. Conton (b. 1837) and Elizabeth Conton (b. 1857). Olive Farquhar was the daughter of Archdeacon Charles William Farquhar of Antigua.
Conton was educated at Durham University in England. After graduating he taught at Fourah Bay College before becoming principal of Accra High School in Ghana. Returning to Sierra Leone, he was principal of two high schools before rising to be chief education officer in Sierra Leone.[2] He subsequently worked for UNESCO.[1]

Conton's novel The African was one of the first novels to be published in Heinemann's African Writers Series. It treated an England romance between a black African student and a white South African woman, turning autobiographical elements into a call for Africa to move as a continent beyond apartheid. Wole Soyinka criticised its utopian "love optimism", calling the novel's main character, Kamara, an "unbelievable prig"