Qualla: Kenneth Kaunda International Airport

Kenneth Kaunda International Airport: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mondoka Zambia, CC BY-SA 4.0. The airport that now carries Kenneth Kaunda's name opened in 1967 under another one. It was plain Lusaka International Airport then, a single terminal on the Great East Road, twenty-seven kilometers northeast of a capital city that had been independent for barely three years. The renaming came in 2011, while Kaunda was still alive and would remain so until 2021, long enough to watch the airport honoring him get torn up and rebuilt almost entirely. Today Terminal Two handles every international flight, six gates polished and glowing, a 360-million-dollar monument funded by Chinese credit and built by Chinese contractors, opened in August 2021 after the pandemic nearly erased the reason for building it in the first place.

Image: Mondoka Zambia | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kenneth Kaunda International Airport: A New Name for a New Century

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JayFromZM, CC0. President Michael Sata renamed three Zambian airports in September 2011 as a political gesture that also happened to be a form of reconciliation. Kaunda had led the country from independence in 1964 until 1991, and the airport on the Great East Road had grown up under his gaze. S...

Image: JayFromZM | CC0

Kenneth Kaunda International Airport: Building Terminal Two

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kelly blak moffat, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2015 the Zambian government began a three-year expansion financed by the Export-Import Bank of China and contracted to China Jiangxi International. The brief was ambitious: a two-story terminal building with twenty-two check-in counters, twelve border channels, six security ch...

Image: Kelly blak moffat | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kenneth Kaunda International Airport: The Shadow Record

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JayFromZM, CC0. Every major airport keeps a memory of its accidents, and Kenneth Kaunda keeps more than most. On 26 August 1969, a Zambian Air Force Hawker Siddeley HS-748 lost control on takeoff and crashed; three of the four people aboard died. On 14 May 1977, a Dan-Air Boeing 707 on approach ...

Image: JayFromZM | CC0

Kenneth Kaunda International Airport: The Hub Spreads Out

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Webster Zulu, CC BY-SA 4.0. From Terminal Two today you can reach Addis Ababa on Ethiopian, Doha on Qatar, Istanbul on Turkish, Johannesburg on several carriers, Nairobi on Kenya Airways, Dubai on Emirates. Proflight Zambia fans out from here to Mfuwe and Livingstone and the South Luangwa. Zambia Airways, r...

Image: Webster Zulu | CC BY-SA 4.0