Francisco Mendes International Airport (IATA: RAI, ICAO: GVFM) was an airport located on Santiago Island in Cape Verde.

It was located about 2 km (1.2 mi) east of central Praia in the southeastern part of the island of Santiago.

After Cape Verdean independence, the airport was named after Francisco Mendes, a Guinea-Bissau independence activist and that country's first Prime Minister.

On 28 September 1998, a TACV de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter (registered D4-CAX) carrying Carlos Veiga, then Prime Minister of Cape Verde, 18 other passengers and three crew members crash-landed at the airport.

There was one fatality (a bodyguard of the prime minister) and four people were injured.