Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki has drafted a new bill requiring travellers visiting Kenya to provide details of their biographic information, travel itinerary and any other information relating to the application before acquiring the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA).
If enacted, the Kenya Citizenship and Immigration (Amendment) Regulations, 2023, will require passengers to undergo an advanced screening process before boarding a flight to Kenya.
The system is called Advanced Passenger Information (API), which involves biographic data of a passenger or crew member and the flight details of an aircraft operator.
Part of these details include the passenger's personal information, such as name and title, contact address, billing address, telephone number, and date of birth.
Interior Cs Kithure Kindiki with security teams at Archer's Post, Samburu County on Thursday, December 28, 2023
Foreigners will also be required to provide all ticketing field information, including the date of issue or purchase of a ticket, selling class of travel, ticket number, and city in which the ticket was issued.
Further, they will provide all travel itineraries for a traveller, such as an itinerary history, the origin of the city and specific destination, layover days (days an airline gives you to change planes between flights), cancelled segments, flight departure date and on-carriage information.
All forms of payment for the ticket, as well as all check-in information, will be required to be filled.
Details such as the official travel document number, issuing state of the organisation of the official travel document, official travel document types and expiration date of the official travel document will be included.
Other pieces of information include nationality, date of birth, gender, seating information, baggage information, visa number, issue date of visa, place of issuance of visa, primary residence, destination address and other document numbers used for travel.
The reforms come as Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) recently clarified that passengers will still be required to apply for e-visas as the system's portal was yet to go live.
Once the system is up, passengers can now apply for ETA on the portal.
Here is a summary of the 16 details:
An official travel document number, issuing state of the organisation of the official travel document, official travel document type, expiration date of official travel document, surname and given names.
Other pieces of information include
Nationality
Date of birth
Gender
Seating information
Baggage information
Visa number
Issue date of visa
Place of issuance of visa
Primary residence
Destination address
Other document number used for travel
