Sénou was not built as an air base. The airport opened in 1974, English Wikipedia says, as Bamako–Sénou International Airport, and the air force grew up on its edge. Today the ASECNA AIP, the aeronautical publication shared by the francophone African states, lists the aerodrome as civil and run by ASECNA, but it carries two military lines: aircraft must not overfly the military zone to the right of runway 06, opposite the runway office, and taxiway D is reserved for state and military aircraft.

Between 2007 and 2012 the airport was rebuilt in a US$181 million project funded by the US Millennium Challenge Corporation; the plan included lengthening the runway, which the 2026 AIP gives as 3,200 by 45 metres in asphaltic concrete. French Wikipedia’s order of battle places Air Base 101 here, in Air Region 1, and distinguishes it from Air Base 100 ‘in Bamako’, which in September 2026 received a new 154 m² command post for the air force. The armed forces’ website confirmed in the same month that Base 101 is at Sénou, when the Air Force Mutual opened a 1,452 m² complex there with a bakery, a shop and a restaurant for aviators.

French Wikipedia also gives a glimpse of the lean years. It records a Harbin Z-9 helicopter based at Sénou in 2005 and, in 2014, Tétras microlights and a Mi-24 stored or wrecked on the base; a Nigerian Air Force team sent in January 2012 to overhaul the MiG-21s left the job unfinished when the crisis broke.

After the coups of 2020 and 2021 the military government turned to Russia and Turkey for aircraft, and Sénou is where they were shown. On 9 August 2022, defenceWeb reported, the transitional president, Colonel Assimi Goïta, commissioned a Su-25, four L-39 jet trainers, a Mi-24P, a Mi-8 and an Airbus C295 at Modibo Keita International Airport. The prime minister, the defence minister Sadio Camara and the Russian ambassador attended; Camara presented the equipment as part of a vision to rebuild a well-equipped, well-trained professional army, and the air force chief, General Alou Boï Diarra, said it would be used against terrorist bases and to evacuate the wounded.

Deliveries continued. Military Africa recorded four more L-39Cs, three Bayraktar TB2 drones and a Mi-35M at the Bamako airport on 16 March 2023, and in December 2024 Goïta presented at least two Turkish Akinci drones to the armed forces in Bamako. The losses came almost as fast: Military Africa counts at least 13 modern manned and unmanned aircraft destroyed since 2023. Neither the government nor the major media have published which of these aircraft are based at Sénou, and this page does not guess.

At about five in the morning of 17 September 2024, fighters of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the al-Qaeda affiliate in the Sahel, attacked the gendarmerie school at Faladié and the military airport at Sénou. JNIM then released videos that, according to the reporting summarised by Wikipedia, showed two C295 transports destroyed, the presidential jet’s engine damaged and further aircraft and drones hit; a World Food Programme aircraft was damaged on the ground, and English Wikipedia says the attackers opened fire on the presidential hangar.

The figures differ by source. AFP counted 77 dead and 255 wounded; RFI, citing civilian and military sources, more than 70 dead; Le Monde more than 60 gendarme students killed at Faladié. JNIM claimed several hundred, and said about ten of its fighters took part, all killed or captured. The military government acknowledged only “some loss of human life” and published no number.

On 25 April 2026 JNIM and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) attacked several towns at once. In Bamako, witnesses cited by English Wikipedia described Russian personnel fighting near Modibo Keita International Airport, where three helicopters were seen patrolling amid sustained gunfire; Russia’s Africa Corps said it had defended the airport. The heaviest blow fell at Kati, the main army base outside the capital, where the defence minister, General Sadio Camara, was killed when attackers drove a car bomb into his house.

The airport was not reported lost. Five months later the air force was holding ceremonies at Bamako again: the new command post at Base 100 and the welfare complex at Base 101 were both opened on 24 September 2026, under the Chief of the General Staff, General Élisée Jean Dao, and the air force chief, Brigadier General Alou Boï Diarra.