Kenyan Immigration Department Reveals The New E-Passport

Looks...odd

By
Kiruti Itimu
-
17
Kenyan epassport

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.

via Immigration Dept on Twitter

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.

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17 COMMENTS

  1. I thought the agenda was to travel across EA using an ID only, so why do we need an East African Passport? Can the passport be used to travel outside EA?

    • Yes that idea is still on. This passport does much more. You can use it to travel internationally. The EAC passport has been done away with and replaced with this passport which follows the format of the European Union passports.

    • Because it’s biometric it may very well pass queues due to it’s security.
      Also it’s good to have a unique colour that many other passports don’t share.

      Personally I like the colour scheme especially the logic of using Lake Victoria as a unifying factor. However, passports take time to get accepted and over time we might find it get’s past queues faster.

  5. Love the new colour because it’s unique and will differentiate our passports from the EU and US. The idea it’s biometric is a very welcome development.

    Those asking whether they can use them to travel outside Africa, the answer is yes and it will replace all current Kenyan passports within 2 yrs.

  6. So there is no amount to the new passport. Because my current passport expires in 2021…… does this mean kids will also have the same epassport?

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