The airfield predates the Kenya Air Force by more than two decades. According to Wikipedia, No. 72 Operational Training Unit of the RAF was setting up at RAF Nanyuki by the beginning of April 1942, having moved from Wadi Gazouza in Sudan, and flew Bristol Blenheims, Martin Baltimores and Douglas Bostons. A National Archives file cited by Wikipedia shows that RAF Nanyuki was used for operations against the Mau Mau in 1953–54.

The Kenya Air Force inherited its main base, Eastleigh in Nairobi, from the RAF in 1964, but Eastleigh was too high and its runway too short for jets: even the RAF had flown its Hunters from Embakasi. On 25 February 1974 the air force opened Nanyuki Air Base as its primary fighter airfield. The Strikemaster fleet moved there in June 1974, the six Hawker Hunters bought that year were based there, and in 1978 the Northrop F-5 arrived, per Wikipedia. The F-5 has been Kenya’s fighter, and Laikipia its home, ever since.

The coup attempt of 1 August 1982 began in Nairobi, but part of the plan depended on Nanyuki. According to Wikipedia’s account, Corporal Bramwel Injeni Njereman led a plot to bomb State House and the General Service Unit headquarters from the base, and forced three pilots — Major David Mutua, Captain John Mugwanja and Captain John Baraza — to fly two F-5E Tigers and a Strikemaster. The pilots dumped the bombs in the Mount Kenya forest and returned to Nanyuki.

UPI’s report of Njereman’s court martial, on 24 November 1982, gives the prosecution’s case: that the 27-year-old armaments technician ordered rockets prepared for bombing targets in Nairobi, had them loaded onto military aircraft, forced a pilot at gunpoint to fly a bombing mission in an F-5 trainer, and issued arms to other men. Njereman said he had not joined voluntarily but took orders from others. He was sentenced to death; UPI noted that his conviction brought the number of servicemen convicted over the coup attempt to 656. After the coup the base was renamed Laikipia Air Base.

Laikipia has become the air force’s schoolhouse as well as its fighter base. On 7 April 2022 President Uhuru Kenyatta commissioned the Kenya Air Force Aviation Centre of Excellence here, which defenceWeb reported would serve the Kenya Defence Forces, other government agencies, civilian companies and neighbouring East African states. The Training Squadron at the base flies Grob G120TP turboprops — nine were in service by September 2021 — alongside the piston G120A-Ks delivered in 2013, which replaced the Bulldog.

Foreign partners use the base too. defenceWeb reported in 2020 that US Africa Command had listed Laikipia in 2015 as a cooperative security location, with prepositioned US equipment but no permanent US personnel. From 20 to 24 August 2019 about 120 air force delegates from Kenya, the United States, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda met at Laikipia for US Air Forces Africa’s African Partnership Flight, working on personnel recovery, combat search and rescue and casualty care.

Since 2016 the base has also housed the headquarters of the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK). The UK Defence Infrastructure Organisation described the site in July 2016 as “an ex RAF station – now a Kenyan Air Force base” and said construction of a new training headquarters with technical and domestic accommodation had begun in April 2016, on land leased directly from the Kenyan Department of Defence. The projects were worth more than £40 million and were expected to be finished by spring 2018.

The DIO said the British Army trained around 10,000 troops a year on the Laikipia plateau. The British presence is a lodger arrangement on a Kenyan base: the aircraft on the flight line are Kenyan, and the British facilities are an army training headquarters, not a flying unit.

On 27 May 2026, according to Wikipedia’s account citing AP, the White House announced that the United States was building a facility at Laikipia Air Base to monitor and quarantine Americans exposed to Ebola. Al Jazeera described it as a 50-bed unit at an air force base in Laikipia County. President William Ruto said he had approved it after a request from President Donald Trump and defended it as consistent with Kenya’s health partnerships with Washington; Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale called it part of a broader effort to strengthen emergency response.

The High Court suspended the plan on 29 May and on 2 June extended its orders and required the government to disclose the agreement, after challenges by the Katiba Institute, the Law Society of Kenya and the doctors’ union. Hundreds protested in Nanyuki on 1 June; Reuters, quoted by Al Jazeera, reported two people killed by gunshots, citing a protest organiser and a security source. Wikipedia records that a 17-year-old student was shot dead in further protests on 9 June and that on 22 June the High Court found Duale in contempt for allowing construction to continue; Reuters reported on 23 June that the minister said construction had been halted.