Travelling with the Ghana Card
There is ongoing conversations concerning the usability of the Ghana Card as a travelling doc. But there seems to be extra propaganda than information within the public area.
In the final couple of days, I’ve made some efforts to cross-check the veracity of the claims of the Ghana Card as a travelling doc.
While coming back from Nairobi on September 21, 2024, an immigration officer was asking to see the passports of travellers. A person behind me mentioned he want to use his Ghana Card, however the official instructed him she would nonetheless need to see his passport.
I later requested an official behind the counter why they wanted to see the passport when the traveller has a Ghana Card. He acknowledged that they nonetheless must see the passport as a result of they couldn’t course of the Ghana Card.
However, coming back from Johannesburg early this morning I sought to know from the immigration officer if I may enter the nation with my Ghana Card. He mentioned sure, and pointed to a sticker on the counter studying “Ghana Card”. He defined additional that they’ve the cardboard reader and will learn the cardboard, and whichever doc I want to use, both my passport or the Ghana Card can be acceptable. He added that they’ve the cardboard reader, explaining additional that, even when I used to be coming into the nation with my passport, they wouldn’t must stamp in it, and so I may produce my Ghana Card and it will be accepted.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Card is an Electronic Machine Readable Travel Document (eMRTD), as Ghana is a member of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Public Key Directory (PKD).
This listing serves as a central repository for exchanging the knowledge required to authenticate digital eMRTDs, akin to ePassports, digital ID playing cards, and Visible Digital Seals.
The Ghana Card can subsequently be used as an ePassport, offered there’s a bilateral settlement between Ghana and the vacation spot nation.
In different phrases, the Ghana Card can be utilized as journey doc to enter any nation that Ghana has a bilateral settlement with to make the cardboard the appropriate journey doc. Until that’s completed, Ghanaian travellers, can solely use the cardboard to enter Ghana and never another nation.
Within the ECOWAS group, the place many of the international locations, notably, Francophone West Africa use nationwide ID playing cards broadly as journey paperwork, it is vitally seemingly attainable to make use of the Ghana Card as a journey doc inside West Africa.
By Emmanuel Ok Dogbevi
Copyright ©2024 by NewsBridge Africa
All rights reserved. This article or any portion thereof will not be reproduced or utilized in any method in anyway with out the specific written permission of the writer aside from the usage of temporary quotations in critiques.
