Kenge Airport (Kongo Central)
Location: Kenge, Kongo Central
Status: Redeveloped
ICAO Code: None
IATA Code: None
Coordinates: -5.769518°, 13.658545°
Kenge is a small village located along the Matadi-Kinshasa railway, approximately 23 kilometers east of Matadi. It has a railway station and is traversed by National Road 1, providing road access.
This village should not be confused with the much larger city of Kenge, the capital of Kwango province, which also has an airport named Kenge Airport (FZCS). Due to this name duplication, researching Kenge in Kongo Central is particularly challenging, and little information about the village is available.
Satellite imagery suggests that Kenge is a small rural settlement, with no significant infrastructure or large buildings.
Historical Background
No records detailing the establishment of Kenge Airport have been found. However, the earliest known map depicting an airfield at Kenge is a 1953 colonial map by the Institut Géographique du Congo Belge.
A notable feature of this map is that the runway is drawn as curved, which is highly unusual and almost certainly did not reflect the actual situation on the ground. At that time, Kenge itself was little more than a few houses and a railway station, suggesting that the airfield may have been linked to railway operations, though its exact function remains unknown.
By 1967, the Joint Operations Graphics, published by the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency, also depicted Kenge Airport, labeling it as “Kenge Lez Matadi”. This is an interesting deviation, as no other known source refers to the airport or village by this name. It is likely that U.S. mapping authorities made this name modification intentionally to avoid confusion with Kenge Airport (FZCS) in Kwango province.
By 1996, the U.S. Tactical Pilotage Chart no longer depicted Kenge Airport, indicating that it had likely been abandoned by that time.
Current Status (as of 2025)
Kenge Airport was abandoned sometime after 1966.
High-resolution satellite imagery from 2002 still shows faint traces of the former runway. By 2021, satellite imagery reveals that the former airfield site had been partially redeveloped, with small houses built over the area.
Today, no trace of Kenge Airport remains, and the site has been reclaimed for residential and agricultural use.