Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has hinted that by 2022, Ghanaian citizens issued with the national biometric card, will be able to travel by air without visas.
Dr Bawumia said government is collaborating with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to have the Ghanacard recognised internationally as an electronic passport.
Explaining further, the Vice President said ‘We have been working with the International Civil Aviation Organization this year to globally activate the e-passport function of the Ghanacard and I am happy to announce that on 13th October 2021, Ghana officially became the 79th member of the International Civil Aviation Organization Public Key Directory (PKD) community’.
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The ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD) is a central repository for exchanging the information required to authenticate e-passports.
Essentially, the PKD allows border control authorities to confirm in less than 10 seconds that the e-passport was issued by the right authority, has not been altered, and is not a copy or cloned document.
Dr Bawumia is optimistic the country will be certified by the ICAO in the first quarter of 2022.
He stressed that ‘When this happens, holders of the Ghanacard will be allowed to board any flight to Ghana’ and ‘they should not have to obtain visas to travel to Ghana’.
According to him, the Ghanacard is already valid for travel to all ECOWAS countries.
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia was delivering a public lecture on the role digitisation has played in transforming the Ghanaian economy on Tuesday at the Ashesi University.
SOURCE: Kasatintin.com
