The Ghana Card, Ghana’s national identity card, can now be used as an e-passport in 44,000 airports throughout the world.
It comes after the Ghana Card was recognized as an electronic passport that can be read and validated at any International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) compliant borders throughout the world.
Ghana was formally presented with the certificate to make the Ghana Card an e-passport during a ceremony conducted at the International Civil Aviation Organization’s headquarters in Montreal, Canada, on Wednesday [February 9, 2022]. The Ghana Card will be accepted at 44,000 airports across the world.
Ransford Sowah, Ghana’s High Commissioner to Canada, was presented with the ‘key’ symbolizing Ghana’s admission to the ICAO family.
This means that the Ghana Card, a one-of-a-kind biometric identification card, will be recognised as an e-passport at 197 international borders and 44,000 airports worldwide.
The Ghana Card holder will be able to board any flight to Ghana just by showing the card.
Ghana was accepted as the 79th member of the ICAO’s Public Key Directory (PKD) community on October 13, 2021.
The ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD) is a central repository for transferring information necessary for e-passport authentication.
The Ghana Card, as well as its future biometric equivalents, can now be used to board flights to Ghana in all 197 (ICAO) compliant nations and 44,000 airports around the world.
The ICAO announcement comes after Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia hinted in November 2021 that Ghanaians living anywhere in the world would soon be allowed to fly home using their Ghana cards.
Dr Bawumia had stated that Ghana will receive the certificate from ICAO by the end of the first quarter of 2022, and that the Ghana Card would be used as an e-passport for Ghanaian nationals by the end of the first quarter of 2022, if all other factors remained constant.
The Ghana Card can now be verified internationally, and border control authorities will be able to confirm in less than 10 seconds that a Ghanaian biometric e-passport (booklet), as well as the Ghana Card/e-passport, were issued by the right authority, have not been altered, and are not copies or cloned documents, according to officials from the National Identification Authority (NIA).
“In practical terms, this means that border control officials will now be able to verify the identification of holders of Ghana’s passports faster and more effectively,” the Authority said in a statement. The Key Ceremony is the final step in Ghana’s e-passport project’s deployment.”
Ransford Sowah, Ghana’s High Commissioner to Canada, noted that the Ghana Card comprises the holder’s biometric information as well as a cryptographic digital signature stored on a chip that may be used to confirm the identity of travelers in a brief statement.
“As a result, Ghana is one of the few countries in the world where the national ID card may also be used as an e-passport,” he added.
“Holders of the Ghana Card can board any flight to Ghana without a visa need for Ghanaians living or born in the diaspora, as we strive to provide an inclusive Akwaaba experience to all children and descendants of our motherland.”
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