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Uganda has become the first East African Country (EAC) to fully shift to the new electronic passport. The other EAC members have been deferring the implementation deadline for the new secure documents. Ugandans who have not acquired the new generation passport now cannot travel out of Entebbe after the country phased out the old document reading machines
Uganda has become the first East African Country (EAC) to fully shift to the new electronic passport. The other EAC members have been deferring the implementation deadline for the new secure documents. Ugandans who have not acquired the new generation passport now cannot travel out of Entebbe after the country phased out the old document reading machines.
The decision to adopt a new generation of passports and phase out old ones was reached by the EAC heads of state in March 2016 in Arusha, Tanzania. Kenya has extended the deadline for acquiring new generation passports to November after it missed out on an earlier one that had been set for December last year. The phase-out of Rwandan passports was pushed from June 27, 2021, to June 27, 2022.
EAC Secretary General Peter Mathuki recently urged member states that have not implemented the e-passport requirement to fast-track the implementation. EAC is encouraging all member states to adopt the new passport in line with the EAC directive.
Kenya rolled out new chip-embedded passports to prevent rampant forgery and impersonation of holders. Authorities have added new features to the passport to make it impossible for anyone to forge or duplicate a Kenyan passport.
Roll-out of the e-passports with a 10-year validity period marked the beginning of the end of the older passports that have been in use since Independence and has joined 60 other countries that use new passports.
