Government bans old machine-readable passports

The government of Uganda through the Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration in the Ministry of Internal Affairs has announced that all travelers with Machine Readable passports will not be allowed to travel out of the country and will be required to present e-passports starting today Tuesday 5 April 2022.

The announcement follows a decision by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and immigration to replace machine-readable passports with e-passports whose deadline was on 4th April 2022.

Since 2019, the Government, through the Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration in the Ministry of Internal Affairs has been issuing public notices informing Ugandans about the phasing out of old passports in preference to the new East African electronic passports (E-passports) and has been extending deadlines until April 4, 2022.

The new EAC e-passport is a fully digitized document incorporating biometric security, making it fully compliant with international best practices, and therefore accepted at border controls all over the world.