On the 12th of March 2020, the Ministry of Health (MoH) announced that a deadly, silent enemy had shown up at Kenya’s door. This would be the country’s first COVID-19 case since the beginning of the outbreak in China in December 2019.

With little information about exactly what the country was going to be up against, Health Cabinet Secretary (CS) Mutahi Kagwe addressed the nation flanked by top government officials.

“The case is a Kenyan citizen who travelled back to Nairobi returning from the United States of America via London, United Kingdom on the 5th March 2020. She was confirmed positive by the National Influenza Centre Laboratory at the National Public Health Laboratories of the Ministry of Health. The patient is clinically stable, and is being managed at the Infectious Diseases Unit at the Kenyatta National Hospital. The lady is now stable and behaving quite normally,” CS Kagwe confidently stated in his official address.

Explaining that COVID-19 had been declared a global pandemic, the government announced precautionary measures that included directives on hygiene and social distancing. Normal life was turned topsy-turvy as Kenya suspended all public gatherings, meetings, religious crusades, games events, etc. Normal church services could go on provided sanitizing and hand-washing facilities were provided to the congregation. Schools remained open but inter-school events were suspended. Public transport providers were to avail hand sanitizers to their passengers. Prison visits were temporarily suspended. Kenyans were to desist from abusing social media platforms or indulging in spreading misinformation that could cause fear and panic. Travel outside the country was restricted.

Fifteen days before the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the country, on 28 February, President Uhuru Kenyatta had issued Executive Order No. 2 of 2020 establishing the National Emergency Response Committee on Coronavirus (NERCC) to coordinate the country’s response to the pandemic.

Kenyans were to desist from abusing social media platforms or indulging in spreading misinformation that could cause fear and panic. Travel outside the country was restricted.

A month later CS Kagwe gave a briefing on recoveries from COVID-19, saying, “In the last 24 hours, an additional eight COVID-19 patients have been discharged from hospital, bringing the total number of recoveries to 114,” he said. “In this same period, however, we have confirmed 8 new cases of coronavirus in the country bringing to total 363. Four of these are from Mombasa and three from Nairobi, and one from Kwale,” he said.

Kenya’s new normal would now include daily COVID-19 briefings to update on the death toll, recoveries, positivity rates and precautionary measures.

The war room

Meanwhile, for a group of computer scientists at Qhala, a Nairobi-based tech company that had been developing a digital contact tracing tool to help the government to respond to the rising cases of cholera in the country, the coronavirus pandemic would come to be the defining moment.

With the arrival of COVID-19 in the country, Dr Shikoh Gitau (a University of Cape Town Computer Science graduate who was born and bred in Mathare Slums) and her team turned their research and development to the pandemic. Their research culminated in the opening of the Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (CEMA), a national data centre to support the control, elimination, and eradication of infectious diseases in Eastern and Central Africa.

Dr Gitau believes in the democratization of access to data and explains that, “If data is just in the hands of a few people, they can use it to tell us what they want or feel like. But if everyone is looking at the same data set, we will have more enriching interpretations of that particular set. The way a data scientist will look at the set is not the same way a journalist, economist or epidemiologist will look at the same set and this is why even in our own team we countercheck our biases by ensuring that many sets of eyes look at the same data.”

The NERCC is using the tool developed by Dr Gitau and her team as the basis of the COVID-19 briefs Kenya receives on a daily basis.

The country also embarked on the hunt for a vaccine. “Kenya has joined the global efforts in search of an effective vaccine for COVID-19 with the start of a trial evaluating the ChAdOx1 nCoV-2019 Oxford coronavirus vaccine,” Oxford University announced in an official statement. Specifically, the country had joined the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil in running trials to evaluate the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine.

The trials were run by the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) at the Kilifi-based KEMRI-Welcome Trust Research Programme under which, following approvals from regulators, Kenyans volunteered for AstraZeneca vaccine trials.

“We’re excited to see our colleagues in Kenya today joining those around the world in helping us to evaluate the ChAdOx1 nCov-2019 Oxford coronavirus vaccine, as it is important to evaluate the vaccine in as many different populations as possible,” said Professor Andy Pollard, the Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and Chief Investigator of the Oxford Vaccine Trial.

The trials involved 40 frontline workers in Kilifi County, with a further 360 volunteers recruited once the safety of the vaccine was confirmed. The volunteers were monitored over a period of 12 months after immunization to assess their health, the vaccine side effects and how their bodies were developing immunity in response to the vaccine.

However, once the vaccines came into production, Kenya was sidelined and reduced to a “beggar”; the country is now depending on donations from the same UK government with which it had partnered to run the trials.

To steer Kenya through the global vaccine supply and administration mess, President Kenyatta appointed his advisor on malaria, Dr Willis Akhwale, to lead the COVID-19 Vaccine Taskforce and make recommendations to the government. “As you know we actually sit every Wednesday; the CS and President Kenyatta have taken personal interest on this matter,” Dr Akhwale explained in an interview.

The trials involved 40 frontline workers in Kilifi County, with a further 360 volunteers recruited once the safety of the vaccine was confirmed.

The taskforce developed the country’s vaccine roadmap regarding vaccine hesitancy, county engagements, vaccine depots, cold chain storage and logistics, digital vaccine and immunisation records as well donor interests, among other issues surrounding Kenya’s COVID-19 vaccine preparedness.

A COVID-19 vaccine deployment plan was released in December 2020. The deployment plan was put in place after Kenya ordered 13 million Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccines through the African Union (AU). However, due to manufacturing constraints, only about one million doses have been delivered

Data from Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) shows that there is a huge interest in vaccines among Africans. “Vaccine hesitancy in Africa is not an issue. There’s 75 per cent acceptance in Africa, apart from Burkina Faso, compared with the US where acceptance is 60 per cent,” Africa CDC Director, Dr John Nkengasong has said.

In total, AU member states, of which Kenya is a part, have ordered 56.9 million Johnson & Johnson (J&J) doses over and above the 220 million doses they had planned for under the advance purchase agreement (APA) with J&J.

The total number of vaccines committed to AU member states by manufacturers is 205.4 million doses, worth about US$130 million. CS Kagwe has confirmed that Kenya will begin to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines by April 2022 to mitigate against supply hitches that are frustrating efforts to vaccinate the entire adult population.

“As of December 13th 2021, a total of 8,223,238 vaccines had so far been administered across the country out of the 23,279,820 doses Kenya has received. Of these, 4,947,002 were partially vaccinated while those fully vaccinated were 3,276,236. The uptake of the second dose among those who received their first dose was at 57.2%.  Proportion of adults fully vaccinated was 12.0%. The Government is working towards vaccinating a targeted population of 27,246,033” the MoH announced.

Kenya has faced a myriad of challenges as it navigates the pandemic, including a major corruption scandal at the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA).

In September 2020, investigators recommended the prosecution of at least 15 top government officials and business people over the alleged misuse of millions of dollars meant for the purchase of COVID-19 medical supplies but to date nothing has been done, with a number of the suspects employed by KEMSA still on half pay.

Earlier investigations found misuse of US$7.8 million meant for the purchase of emergency personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and hospitals across the country. Health workers in many of the counties continue to complain about the shortage of PPE and poor or delayed pay.

With the emergence of the Omicron variant, there is a shortage of testing kits across the country. The mechanism for testing at points of entry and for those in quarantine is flawed. The cost of COVID-19 treatment and the lack of availability of medical oxygen and drugs is also a major issue, with insurance companies jumping ship on coronavirus.

The country still has other major gaps that need to be addressed. These include public access to COVID-19 information, especially concerning vaccines, as low vaccine uptake is a major problem.

Kenya has faced a myriad of challenges as it navigates the pandemic, including a major corruption scandal at the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority.

According to Dr Richard Mihigo, the Immunization and Vaccines Development Programme Coordinator at WHO Africa Region, compared to other African countries like Morocco, Seychelles, Mauritius, Tunisia, Cape Verde and Botswana that have reached the global target of vaccinating 40 per cent of their population, Kenya has not attained its target of fully inoculating 10 million people by the end of December 2021 and has so far only managed to administer COVID-19 vaccines to 3.3 million people.

Medical facilities are overwhelmed and there is a lack of medical equipment and mismanagement in most public hospitals. Vaccine wastage by some of the people conducting the rollout is rife in the country. According to WHO, vaccine wastage is the sum of vaccines discarded, lost, damaged or destroyed. Since vaccines account for a significant portion of immunization programme costs, ensuring that wastage is minimized without jeopardizing vaccination coverage is key.

There is a lot of laxity in the delivery of health services to Kenyans who live in rural areas, especially in the country’s northern region. The communities in this region have difficulties accessing health facilities and many are not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine because of the hundreds of kilometres they have to travel to be vaccinated.

It’s been four years now since a small group of armed men targeted a police post in Mocímboa da Praia in northern Mozambique, a small act that grew into a major insurgency targeting civilians, occupying territory and forcing out a major energy company preparing to extract gas offshore in the province of Cabo Delgado. To date, 3500 people have been killed in the armed conflict and 745,000 displaced. The insurgency came to an apparent halt this summer after Rwandan armed forces, and then the SADC mission to Mozambique (SAMIM), arrived in Mozambique to fight it. The current relative calm on the battlefield has invited reflections on whether the military approach is working and what should come next. How could the insurgency in Mozambique grow in this way, and is an international military intervention the right response to stop it?

Much of the current debate among policy makers and analysts makes important assumptions about why and how insurgency begins, pointing to either external influences, such as transnational Islamist terrorism, or the long-term lack of development and marginalization of people in the northern region of Mozambique, leading to grievances that motivate the young and poor to join the insurgency. While these aspects certainly have played a role in Mozambique, we need to take into account the government’s response and how it has helped escalate the conflict and strengthened the insurgency. Ignorance and denial have been core government attitudes that left the party in power, Frelimo, with little understanding and capacity to respond to the growing unrest in Cabo Delgado. Instead, the response of choice—severe repression and a lack of respect for human rights—has nurtured the rebellion. The current stability is therefore, in all likelihood, temporary.

A slowly growing insurgency

The conflict began with the formation of a religious Islamic sect in 2007, which sought to withdraw its members from the state. The first confrontations with the local police took place in 2015-2016, but armed violence only began in October 2017. The group is known as Al-Shabaab (“youth” in Arabic) or Ahlu Sunnah Wal-Jamâa. It pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2018 and was recognized as a wing of Islamic State’s “Central African Province” in July 2019, but it remains unclear what the implications of this relationship are. Although violence initially was small-scale and directed at state armed forces, the insurgency began to target more civilians in 2019 and perpetrated severe forms of violence, such as beheadings, against them throughout 2020 and beyond.

In 2020, the nature of the war changed completely when the armed group managed to occupy district towns in March for a few days, and then captured and occupied the town of Moçímboa da Praia in August for a year. International attention to the conflict suddenly skyrocketed in March 2021, when the armed group conducted the most sophisticated operation yet, an attack on the city of Palma, with several dozen people dead, including expatriate workers on the liquified natural gas processing plant owned by TotalEnergies. This led to a major evacuation mission conducted mainly by helicopters operated by the Dyck Advisory Group (DAG), a private military company supporting the Mozambican government, and triggered a regional impetus to help Mozambique manage the crisis. TotalEnergies saw the events in Palma as a reason to temporarily halt its gas exploration project on the coast in April.

An inadequate government response

Early analyses of the conflict pointed to the fact that initial repressive actions by the local government and security forces were a contributing factor in the radicalization of the conflict to armed violence in October 2017. Until early this year, the police forces were in charge of responding to the insurgency, with their infamous Rapid Intervention Unit (RIU), which allegedly committed indiscriminate violence against civilians. In January, the government assigned the task to the military and appointed a new military commander, who, however, shortly afterwards died of COVID-19.

Up until the spring of 2021, the government resisted inviting international military deployments and relied on private companies for military and logistical support and bilateral training missions. Officially, President Nyusi was eager to protect “Mozambique’s sovereignty,” in an apparent reference to a history of foreign meddling when Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa supported the rebel group Renamo on Mozambican soil. Nyusi, instead, relied on old and trusted international partners, but the results were mixed. The Russian Wagner group didn’t stay long, leaving Mozambique in November 2019 after a two-month deployment and conflicts with the Mozambican authorities about the counterinsurgent strategy. In April 2020, the Mozambican government hired DAG, led by Colonel Lionel Dyck who helped Frelimo fight the Renamo rebels in the 1980s. After a year of activity, the Mozambican government let the contract with DAG expire.

Only after the traumatic attack on Palma in March 2021 did the Mozambican government change course and accept international military deployments to fight the insurgency. In July, the Rwandans sent troops to northern Mozambique. The SADC mission was launched in August. In a militarily and symbolically significant operation early August, Rwandan and Mozambican armed forces retook Mocímboa da Praia from the insurgents. However, many analysts agree that the success of the international forces is only temporary, as the root causes of the conflict have been left unaddressed, and the insurgents—in typical guerrilla style—have dispersed to regroup and attack elsewhere. Refugees have begun to return to their areas of origin, and international aid organizations have promised to support them with aid and projects so that socio-economic reasons to support the insurgency could disappear. But will this work?

From the beginning, the Mozambican government did not seem interested in any of the many theories that scholars developed about the origins of the insurgency. The government actively hindered scholars and analysts’ efforts to speak to officials, militants and the displaced in the region, and even detained local journalists and expelled a British journalist covering the insurgency. After blaming various illegitimate groups in society and foreigners, in his statements on the conflict, President Nyusi has largely settled on the perspective that the insurgency has external origins and transnational terrorism is responsible for the violence. This is a perspective that Rwanda supports, as it helps justify why Rwanda is militarily active in Mozambique—an issue that has raised a lot of suspicions. And it has triggered US interest in the conflict; the US designated the armed group an affiliate of ISIS and a foreign terrorist organization in March 2021, an action many observers say will not necessarily help solve the conflict.

Mozambique’s counterinsurgency response has also raised a lot of criticism, as it failed to protect civilians. Problems of coordination between DAG and Mozambican ground forces lead to civilian casualties and friendly fire casualties among the Mozambican security forces. When the government forces took back Palma in March, they looted and vandalized private businesses, including banks, and residences. Amnesty International accused private contractors, such as the DAG, as well as state armed forces of human rights abuses, and the police of harassment and extortion. As a result, the civilian population does not trust the state and its (hired) armed forces to protect them.

The government recognizes that the armed conflict is not over yet. But it does not recognize its own role in escalating the conflict and its comprehensive responsibility in solving it. Joseph Hanlon, long-term observer of Mozambique, inspired by the failures in Afghanistan, frequently cites in his newsletter those voices that warn of military solutions to armed rebellion, emphasizing instead long-term development efforts. But much of the government response is shaped by catering to the oil and gas firms, as a recent reshuffle of ministers after a meeting with Exxon executives—who underlined the importance of further security improvements before their activities could continue—shows. In remarks on Armed Forces Day in September, President Nyusi stated that the main priority is improving security for the gas projects.

Overall, the government has not only obscured the origins of, but also the response to the Cabo Delgado insurgency. Transparency around the government’s counterinsurgency strategy is lacking. Contracts with private security companies are not made public, and Parliament has not had any say in the deployment of foreign troops. It’s no accident then that a recent ISS policy brief recommends completely rebuilding state institutions in the region and freeing them of corruption to build “islands of integrity.” A new and different state is necessary to manage the complex problems in the region, but is it possible under the current regime that has fed the conflict?

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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

For the third time, Kenya has postponed the deadline for phasing out the old generation passport and the introduction of the biometric e-passport.

Kenya, together with its East African Community (EAC) partners, is doing away with the “analogue” passport and replacing it with an electronic document. The new document has a chip that, according Immigration officials, stores the passport holder’s information and travel history, thus conforming to international passport security standards that require passports to contain a tamper-proof electronic chip.

The rollout, however, has been shambolic, with various deadlines extended since 2018. Immigration Director General said that the latest extension is a result of the East African Community having changed the deadline for all member states to November 2022.

On 4 February 2021, Interior and Government Coordination Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, under whom the Immigration Department falls, announced a 10-month extension of the deadline for the voiding of the old generation travel documents. CS Matiang’i said the Covid-19 pandemic had forced the Immigration Department to scale down operations. The new deadline was set as at December 31, 2021.

“Barring any unforeseen circumstances, this is the last extension and Kenyans are advised to make the necessary arrangements and acquire the electronic passports at the earliest opportunity possible to avoid travelling inconveniences,” the Cabinet Secretary said.

“For the avoidance of doubt, starting January 1, 2022, the old dark blue passport will be null and void and no Kenyan will be able to travel internationally without a valid East African Community biometric e-passport,” he added.

The e-passport journey

The decision to phase out the old generation passport was first made public in April 2015 and the electronic passport was to be launched in December 2016. However, then Immigration Director Major (Rtd) Gordon Kihalangwa later announced that the e-passport launch would be pushed to April 2017. This date was moved to September of that year due to “unforeseen circumstances”.

“Due to circumstances beyond our control, the launch will now not happen as stated,” Kihalangwa said in a statement at the time, noting however that he was confident that the new deadline would be met.

It was said in some quarters that the postponement was to allow other EAC member states to be ready for a simultaneous rollout as spelt out in a directive of the Heads of State Summit in March 2016.

Deals within EAC

The 17th Ordinary Summit of the EAC Heads of State had directed the partner states to commence issuance of the e-passport by 1 January 2017 and to phase out the current machine-readable East African and national passports from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2018.

When this failed, the 35th EAC Council of Ministers meeting directed member states to commence issuance of the e-passport by 31 January 2018. This, the EAC said in a statement, was in consideration of the different levels of preparedness of the member states.

During the Council of Ministers Summit, Burundi, Kenya and Rwanda said they were ready to start rolling out the document, but Tanzania and Uganda asked for more time to finalise preparations.

Tanzania said it was upgrading its systems and was sourcing for a contractor to install the additional infrastructure, while Uganda said it was planning a public-private mode of financing for the production of the booklets.

“Burundi reported that through Public Private Partnership arrangement, it had completed the process of procuring the EA e-passport booklets and was ready to commence issuance by 3rd April 2017. Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda reported to commence issuance of the new international EA e-passport not later than April 2017, while the United Republic of Tanzania would be ready to commence the issuance of the e–Passport by 1st January 2018,” the EAC brief on 7 April 2017 said.

According to the EAC, the e-passport is expected to boost the free movement of people across the region and it will be in line with the implementation of the Common Market Protocol, which guarantees the right to move freely between EAC member countries.

Article 9 of the protocol on travel documents provides, “A citizen of a Partner State who wishes to travel to another Partner State shall use a valid common standard travel document. 2. The Partner States which have agreed to use machine‐readable and electronic national identity cards as travel documents may do so. 3. The Partner States which have agreed to use machine‐readable and electronic national identity cards shall work out modalities for the implementation of paragraph 2.”

Among the challenges member states are facing in the rollout is the cost and controversies surrounding the tendering process.

For instance, the EastAfrican has reported that the installation of new technology to print the e-passport and the phasing out of the old generation passports will cost the Kenyan government about US$5 million.

Among the challenges member states are facing in the rollout is the cost and controversies surrounding the tendering process.

“The technology installed by the Pakistani government will print a maximum of 2,000 passports per day, up from the current 800,” the Kenyan daily covering regional affairs said in a September 2017 report.

E-passport tender

However, as early as 2015, there were reports of tender concerns in connection with the e-passport. The Daily Nation of 9 May 2015 reported concerns “over a Sh1.5 billion e-passport tender after officials directly engaged British firm De La Rue and Pakistani government agency Nadra to do the work”.

According to the Nation, the projected budget to buy the e-passport booklets and production software was likely to shoot up from KSh1.5 billion in the first year to KSh5 billion in the third year.

There were concerns as to whether Kenyans would get value for their money.

In the arrangement, De La Rue, which also prints Kenyan currency, was to manufacture the 145,000 booklets, while the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) was to develop the software.

On its website, Nadra confirms it undertook the job, enabling Kenya to issue machine-readable passports.

“The implemented technology and business logic has enabled Kenya with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) compliant data acquisition software for passports. Passport data is synchronized with their identity system,” it says.

There were concerns as to whether Kenyans would get value for their money.

Nadra further says that a total of 775,000 machine-readable passports have been issued to Kenyans, and that it provides technical support and software upgrades when required.

The company does not indicate the timeframe within which the passports were issued but in May 2019, Kihalangwa, then Immigration Principal Secretary, told Parliament that the department had issued 800,000 passports ahead of the then August 31 deadline.

Kihalangwa said the department was serving an average of 4,000 passport applicants daily, with Nyayo House centre in Nairobi handling 2,000 applicants a day, while the Kisumu and Mombasa centres were processing 1,000 each.

“So far, we have issued almost 800,000 passports and we expect a very good number will have been done by 31st August,” he told the National Assembly Committee on Administration and National Security. In June of that year, Matiang’i said one million Kenyans had transitioned to the electronic passport but 1.5 million Kenyans were still holding the old generation document.

Kenyan diaspora

Kenyans in the diaspora, however, have  complained of the limited number of centres at which they can renew their passports. This is despite President Uhuru Kenyatta directing in March 2019 that Kenyans living abroad be issued with the e-passport in their countries of residence.

It is estimated that 3 million Kenyan nationals live and work abroad.

Speaking during his state visit to Namibia, President Kenyatta said he saw no reason why Kenyans living outside the country should incur huge financial costs to travel back home to Nairobi to acquire the new passports.

“Why should these people be made to pay money to fly to Kenya just to get a passport and go back to work? Form a team that will go from country to country to register Kenyans in the diaspora,” President Kenyatta said in Windhoek, responding to complaints from Kenyans living there.

Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu were the only centres issuing the document at the time but in June 2019, the government opened other centres in Nakuru, Eldoret, Embu and Kisii to complement those in the three cities.

Abroad, Kenya launched centres in Pretoria, Washington DC, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Beijing and the United Arab Emirates.

Operations in London, however, delayed, as the systems and infrastructure had not been set up.

“We are aware of the complaints [from Kenyans in the UK]. The Immigration Department has said infrastructure will be in place by August 10 so we expect to be at full steam around August 15,” Kenya’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Manoah Esipisu said at the time.

However, the deadline to migrate to the e-passport was again pushed by six months to 1 March 2020.

Agnes Gitau, Managing Partner at GBS Africa in London, said that while extending the deadline gave Kenyans living abroad time to apply for the e-passport, it was imperative to communicate the new dates and the process with clarity to the over 3 million Kenyans living abroad.

“Communication has to be targeted to Kenyans through their local communities, churches, universities as there are thousands of Kenyans studying abroad and the easiest way to reach them is via their institutions.

“The Kenyan students abroad is at least one source of data governments through their embassies have. Posting on embassies website or twitter is not enough. They have to do more to reach as many Kenyans as possible,” Gitau, who also works with the Kenyan diaspora in the UK, said.

Gitau also attributed the extension to the pressure from the Kenyan diaspora.

“Though the process is still bureaucratic and unnecessarily lengthy, by extending the dates, [. . .] for once the department for Migration has responded positively.  I am aware the process is so cumbersome that some Kenyans opt to travel to Kenya to apply for the e-passport there rather than at embassies,” she added.

To process more Kenyans, Gitau proposes mobile registration/renewal booths during events whenever there is a large gathering of Kenyans as it would be a logistical nightmare to establish centres in all the cities where Kenyans live.

“The only sensible place would be perhaps in Scotland and Ireland, again depending on the numbers of Kenyans there,” she adds.

Confusion in foreign missions

In December 2018, Deputy President William Ruto had issued a statement that exposed the confusion and the government’s disjointed approach.

Speaking to Kenyans living in Italy on 2 December 2018, Deputy President Ruto announced a new deadline of 2020, noting that the initial deadline of 31 August 2019 was impractical.

“The deadline is soon approaching and only a small fraction has managed to upgrade their passports to the new e-passport. The backlog at the immigration will not allow us to achieve this,” Ruto said.

This caused confusion in the consular offices of foreign embassies in Nairobi, with some maintaining that the initial deadline stood.

For instance, the Embassy of Belgium tweeted on May 2019: “#ConsularAffairs – Please note that according to the announcement of the Kenyan Government, the old Kenyan passports will expire on 01.09.2019. The Embassy of Belgium in Nairobi will ONLY accept the new East African Community biometric e-Passports for Schengen visa applications”. The US embassy had made a similar announcement on 30 April 2019, which was however retracted on 1 May 2019.

In the initial communication, the US Embassy said, “All travelers to the United States from Kenya must have a passport valid for at least six months from date of entry. Therefore, U.S. Embassy Nairobi can no longer place U.S. visas in the previously issued non-digital passport expiring August 31, 2019.”

It then sent another statement saying, “Visa applicants may apply for a US visa with a non-digital Kenyan passport. We will place a US visa in a non-digital passport until further notice. Holders of current US visas do not need to take any action.”

That the US — one of the countries that have very strict immigration rules and requirements — flip-flopped on the issue in such a short time shows the level of confusion among the foreign missions.

This caused confusion in the consular offices of foreign embassies in Nairobi.

Officials of various embassies who did not want to go on record said at the time that they were yet to receive any communication concerning the extension. Some said they would continue issuing visas on the old passports.

Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau downplayed the issue at the time, saying only, “It’s not a worry. We shall cross that bridge in August [2019]”.

Two years later, another deadline has been issued.

Speaking with nationals of other EAC countries (Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi) it is clear that although their governments have started rolling out the e-passport, they have not set deadlines within which the exercise should be completed.

In Kenya, even as the government rolls out the e-passport, it is also upgrading the driving licence to a digital one as well as implementing the National Integrated identity Management System, popularly known as Huduma Namba, which was declared illegal by the courts in October last year for contravening the Data Protection Act. The digital driving licence rollout was to start in 2017 after a failed attempt in 2008.

It remains to be seen whether the November 2022 e-passport deadline will be met this time round and the measures the government will put in place to ensure that the rollout is completed.