The Director General of Immigration Services, Evelyn Cheluget, and the Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizen Services, Amb. Prof Julius Bitok led a delegation of Kenyan officials to the International Civil Aviation Organization Public Key Directory (ICAO PKD) Ceremony for Kenya in Montreal, Canada.
Months after abandoning its Visa policy and opting for an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) for its visa, Kenya has now deposited its signature into the ICAO database.
“This significant event involved the depositing of Kenya’s electronic signature for the e-Passport into the ICAO PKD database, a crucial step towards facilitating electronic validation of e-Passports globally,” remarked Cheluget at the ceremony.
The ICAO PKD is a central repository for exchanging the information required to authenticate electronic Machine-Readable Travel Documents (eMRTDs) such as ePassports.
The benefits of an e-passport can only be realized when border control points can authenticate the chip.
Authentication of an e-passport is meant to validate the authenticity and integrity of the document by verifying the digital signature on the chip.
Each State issuing an e-passport establishes a single Country Signing Certification Authority (CSCA) as its national trust point in the context of e-passports.
The CSCA certificate containing the CSCA’s Public Key for verification of Document Signer Certificates (DSC) and other PKD contents must be distributed securely to ICAO and all Participants of PKD. The CSCA will be securely stored within the ICAO PKD System.
Kenya joined ICAO PKD in Dec 2022 and has up to 15 months from the joining data to have its certificate imported.
The move is meant to support visitors who intend to come to visa-free Kenya.
The Kenyan ETA is a semi-automated system that determines the eligibility of visitors to travel to Kenya.
