Ghana’s national Identity Card, the Ghana Card has officially been recognized globally as a valid e-passport in all International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) compliant countries and will enable holders of the card to board flights to Ghana from 197 countries and 44,000 airports worldwide.
This followed 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.
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.”
In a brief remark, H.E Ransford Sowah 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 emphasized that this step makes Ghana one of the few countries in the world where the national ID card also has an e-passport capability
“With this, 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,” he stated.
