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South Sudan in preparation to adopt East Africa e-Passport: Angelina

Author : | Published: November 12, 2024

Booklets of the East African Passport for The United Republic of Tanzania - COURTESY

The Minister of Interior has announced on Monday that South Sudan will soon adopt the East Africa e-Passport – being the only member of the regional trade bloc that has not embraced the system.

Addressing the budget hearing in parliament on Monday, Angelina Teny revealed that the country is in the process of joining other East African countries in using a common passport.

Angelina informed the lawmakers that soon, her ministry will introduce a memo on the introduction of the regional passport for ratification in the parliament without specifying the adoption date.

She emphasized that the introduction of the EA e-passport will bring significant changes to South Sudan’s integration process, by aligning with the regional agreements the country has signed.

She also mentioned that the passport will feature three main categories, which will come with new regulations that will be presented to the parliament for approval.

“Actually, we are in the process of going to the East African Community passport. We are the only country that has really liked behind, and we remain behind,” she said.

“So, this will change a lot of things because it’s already as part of the integration process that we have signed to when we ratified the East African charter.”

“It will change a lot of things because that passport only has three categories and so on and it will come with some new regulations and it will come to this house as well.”

The EAC Passport was launched in 2016 and introduced two years later as a travel document to ease border crossing for East Africans. Its roll-out in South Sudan had reportedly been in the final stage and was expected to start in early 2023.

In June 2018, the EAC’s partner states, including South Sudan were directed to start issuing the new East African machine-readable Electronic-Passports by 2019 after the preparedness of each partner state was considered.

The e-Passport – which has diplomatic, service and ordinary categories – is expected to boost the free movement of people across the East African region and facilitate the implementation of the Common Market protocol.

Ordinary passports will be valid for up to 10 years while the diplomatic passport and service passport will be valid according to specific terms of the service of the holder.

The standard international e-Passport will have a chip that holds the same information that is printed on the passport’s data page, the holder’s name, date of birth, and other biographic information.

It will also contain a biometric identifier and have a digital photograph of the holder and security features to prevent unauthorized reading or “scanning” of data stored.

The new EAC travel document will come in red, green and sky blue —the colors of the EAC flag — but with text and national emblems, in gold to complete its face.

The color of the passport will depend on categories. For instance, EAC diplomats will carry a passport that is red in color, green for officials and sky blue for ordinary people. The outer front cover will have the words ‘East African Community’ in gold on top and below the name of the issuing Partner States will be pasted.

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