Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda will begin issuing a common electronic passport in November.

The national non-biometric passports will be phased out over a two-year period ending in 2017. But Burundi has until close to the cut-off date to change over, as its current document already conforms to the new international standard for passports.

Benon Mujuni, Principal Immigration Officer in Uganda, said the new EAC e-passport will be launched by the heads of state during their annual ordinary summit, after which the responsible regional authorities will start writing to different international bodies to ensure that it is a recognised travel document worldwide.

“ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organisation] is one of the international bodies that we shall inform about the internationalisation of the EAC passport,” he said.

ICAO is responsible for coming up with regulations and standards in immigration and movement of mail and live agricultural products across national borders.

The EAC set an October 2015 deadline for states to have completed the process of procuring passport booklets and issuance systems for the passports.

James Baba, Uganda’s Minister of State for Internal Affairs, said that Kampala, which has just started the procurement process of the systems and booklets, is focusing on a November deadline.

Mr Baba added that it is important for the region to start issuing this document by November 24, 2015, because this is when the international community will require all countries to phase out all non-electronic passports.

Only Burundi currently issues an electronic passport, while Rwanda has purchased the booklets and issuance systems and is now at the pilot stage.

And as the 2017 deadline when many countries will no longer accept old model passports looms, Uganda’s directorate of immigration appears unsure of how to treat people acquiring passports now. 

The current Ugandan passport, with its 46 pages and 10-year expiry period, costs $40. And according to Mr Mujuni, Uganda prints 50,000 passports daily, meaning that over 4 million old model passports that people will have received between September and the end of November will work for just two years, after which they will become obsolete.  

Officials in the Immigration Department however say that once procurement of the new system is complete, individuals with old model passports that haven’t expired yet will be asked to take them back, so that an electronic chip with biometric data is included. But these same officials admit that they are unsure of how this will be done, since the type of paper and features of the e-passport will be different. 

The e-passport will have an electronic chip that holds the same information in the biometric form, as that printed on the passport’s bio data page, including the holder’s name, date of birth, passport number and what the holder does for a living, among other things.  

It will also contain a biometric identifier, a digital photograph of the holder and security features to prevent unauthorised reading or scanning, which will in turn reduce cases of forgery.

The cost of this e-passport is expected to be around the $100 mark. In the region Burundi, currently charges the highest for its ordinary passport at $148; Tanzania’s costs $22, Kenya’s $42, Rwanda’s $71 and Uganda’s $40.