The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has given its seal of approval for Ghana’s national Identity Card, the Ghana Card to be recognized globally as a valid e-passport
Thus, holders of the Ghana Card as well as its future biometric equivalents can present it as official documentation at all 197 (ICAO) compliant countries and 44,000 airports worldwide and board flights to Ghana.
A “Key Ceremony” on Wednesday, February 9, 2022 at the headquarters of ICAO in Montreal, Canada, during which Ghana, represented by the High Commissioner to Canada, H.E Ransford Sowah, received the ‘key’ to symbolically indicate the country’s entry into the ICAO family.
The ICAO declaration follows an earlier hint, given in November 2021 by the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, that Ghanaians anywhere in the world would soon be able to travel back home using their Ghana cards.
Delivering a public lecture at the Ashesi University on the role digitization is playing in transforming the Ghanaian economy, Dr. Bawumia indicated that apart from acting as the major source of proof of identity, the Ghana card will be used as an e-passport for Ghanaian citizens, all things being equal, by the end of the first quarter of 2022.
Dr. Bawumia said, “It is not widely known that the Ghanacard is also an electronic passport (e-passport) that contains the biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of travelers”.
He added that, “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.”
This announcement was dismissed by a section of the public, especially members of the NDC, as “Impossible” and at best a figment of his imagination.
Officials of the National Identification Authority (NIA) say, however, that with the Key Ceremony in Montreal over, the 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 Ghanacard/e-passport were issued by the right authority, have not been altered, and are not copies or cloned documents.
A statement issued by the Authority read in part, “In practical terms, this means that it will now be faster and more effective for border control authorities to verify the identity of holders of Ghana’s passports. The Key Ceremony is the final stage of the implementation of Ghana’s e-passport project.”
H.E Ransford Sowah in his remarks explained that, the Ghana Card contains the biometric information of the holder with a cryptographic digital signature stored on a chip that can be used to authenticate the identity of travellers.
He asserted that, “this makes Ghana one of the few countries in the world where the national ID card also has an e-passport capability,”.
He noted that, “This means that with this Key Ceremony, all holders of the Ghana Card have an ICAO compliant e-passport that can be read and verified at all ICAO compliant airports/border posts across the world. It can be used for international travel; subject of course to visa restrictions and bilateral agreements. Indeed, the Ghana Card is already valid for travel in all ECOWAS countries.
“For Ghanaians living or born in the diaspora, holders of the Ghana Card can be allowed to board any flight to Ghana without any visa requirement as we seek to give an inclusive Akwaaba experience to all children and descendants of our motherland.”
You may recall that the then Ministry of Communications, as part of its agenda to protect transactions and interactions in the country’s Digital Space, established an Authentication and Verification System for online transactions.
This system is to ensure the creation and management of digital identities, known as Certificates. These Certificates are necessary for a wide range of government functions and activities including the ability to provide citizens with access to electronic government services, issuance of passports and identity cards. Furthermore, it also serves as a mechanism for ensuring accountability through Digital Signing and Timestamping.
At a ceremony to operationalize Ghana’s National Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in Accra on Wednesday, 17th July, 2019 the Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Hon. Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, stated then that the PKI is coming in as an additional layer of authentication to protect Ghana’s Digital Infrastructure and Electronic Payment Systems.
She said that Operators in the Fintechs, Application and Software developers had long called for the PKI System to give authentication and protection to their products and services.
She stated that the PKI will help with digital financial transactions, the issuance of a digital certificate, electronic signatures of documents and authentication of electronic signatures of documents.
She intimated that it is easy to fake all kinds of things using the same technology, so the PKI is needed for requisite authentication.
The vision of gaining the necessary Authority to issue such Certificates, has now been realised.This is an enviable feat achieved by Ghana, ahead of many of its continental peers.
