Cameroon rolls out biometric passport

Cameroon has just started to issue its new biometric passport.

Reported in Business in Cameroon, the first biometric passport was issued in July, though the launch will ramp up in Yaoundé next week.

According to the report, the new passport is compliant with the technical specification from the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) and contains biometric information of passport holders.

Cameroon is now the first country to issue CEMAC-compliant passports, ahead of the January 2014 deadline.

Reported previously, Elections Cameroon began a biometric voter registration exercise last year, using equipment from Germany-based Giesecke und Devrient.

Biometric passports are gaining a lot of traction around the world. According to a recent Steria survey, more than half of Europeans support biometric systems for ID documents or ePassports.

Also, in China, the government’s ePassport objective has been a major driver for the broad biometrics market as a whole. 

Article Topics

Africa  |  Cameroon  |  epassport  |  immigration