We are living in a digital age which means a lot of the ‘analogue’ systems that we have are being phased out. The government has been on this gravy train for a while where we are getting access to their services via the eCitizen portal, paying for parking via USSD codes in Nairobi and now they are extending it to passports.
The current passport system has been stuck in the analogue system for too long now and although the application process has been taken online, the actual passports needed an overhaul. That is why the government decided to announce the rollout of the ePassport.
The new ePassport were to be issued from April this year, but the Immigration Department decided to change the rollout date to the 1st of September.
We had a vague idea of how the ePassport would look like from the renders and now we have a look of how the actual one would look like in real life via a tweet from the Immigration Department.
The Kenyan ePassport at first glance shows three distinct features: The new logo at the bottom which is the symbol for a biometric passport, the new blue colour scheme and the fact that it is labelled “East African Community.”
The ePassport will contain a chip that will have the biometric information of the passport holder. They also gave a reason why the Passport is light blue in two tweets:
“About the colour. That came out as an agreement from EAC member states. ”
“Blue: Lake Victoria signifying the unity of the EAC Partner States.”
When they get to finally launch the ePassports, Kenya will join several countries all over the world that issue this kind of passport.
The Immigration department is yet to announce how much it will cost to get one.
