Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has disclosed that the Ghana Card will by the first quarter of 2022 be recognised and accepted globally as an electronic passport.
“When this happens, holders of the Ghana card will be allowed to board any flight to Ghana. Furthermore, the good news for diasporan Ghanaians is that when the Ghana Immigration Service is linked to the NIA architecture, diasporan Ghanaians who hold the Ghana Card should not have to obtain visas to travel to Ghana,” he added.
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The Vice President said these when he delivered an address on “Transforming an economy through digitalisation: The Ghana story,” at the Ashesi University Campus on Tuesday, November 2.
“It is not widely known that the Ghana Card is also an electronic passport (e-passport) that contains the biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of travellers. We have been working with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) this year to globally activate the e-passport function of the Ghana Card and I am happy to announce that on 13th October 2021, Ghana officially became the 79th member of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Public Key Directory (PKD) community. The ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD) is a central repository for exchanging the information required to authenticate e-passports.
“The PKD allows border control authorities to confirm in less than ten seconds that the e-passport was issued by the right authority, has not been altered, and is not a copy or cloned document. Ghana’s Country Signing Certificate Authority would therefore soon be imported into the ICAO PKD System through what is known as a Key ceremony. The Key Ceremony for Ghana will be held at the ICAO headquarters in Montreal Canada hopefully by the 1st quarter of 2022,” he stated.
The Ghana Card is a national identity card that is issued by the National Identification Authority (NIA) to Ghanaian citizens – both resident and non-resident – and legally and permanently resident foreign nationals.
It is proof of identity, citizenship and residence of the holder.
The current version is in ID1 format and biometric.