Ronald William John Keay (20 May 1920 – 7 April 1998) was a British botanist, who did much of his work in tropical Africa. Keay was educated at the University of Oxford. He was an expert in West African forest flora working at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and at the Forest Herbarium Ibadan (FHI), part of the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN), and was director of that institute from 1960 to 1962. He collected specimens in Rhodesia, Nigeria, West Cameroon, the Congo, Rhodesia and Zambia.