Kenya Introduces Digital E-Passports

Kenya’s immigration Department plans to abolish the current manual passports and start issuing electronic e-passports by 2019. There will be new passports that will have an electronic chip with all the information found in the old-model passport. All the passports will be registered by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

The e-passport will pave way for  new passports that should have been adopted by August 2019. Applicants will need to apply for the replacement passports and return back the old ones since they will no longer be valid.

To prevent forgery, the new model will have a biometric identifier, security features and digital photograph of the person. The price of acquiring the new passport will remain the same as the older version.

This applies to the East African and diplomatic passports as well. The computer chips will contain a traveler’s itinerary that will be updated at every border point the traveler’s pass.

The Kenyan e-passports will be efficient enough to reduce impersonation cases of people running away from the country because of its tracking feature.

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