Côte d’Ivoire, proud pioneers with biometric passports

Thanks to biometrics, the identity of a document holder can be verified rapidly and with certainty

“Côte d’Ivoire has always tried to be the engine for change for our region in Western Africa,” says Eric Poby, director-general of SNEDAI. “With the project of biometrical passports we have certainly played that role.”
In 2008, Côte d’Ivoire decided to introduce biometrical passports for all its citizens, and last year, new projects were started for biometric visa and biometric diplomatic and service passports. For all these projects, Zetes and SNEDAI (Société Nationale d’Edition de Documents Administratifs et d’Identification) worked closely together. 

Why did Côte d’Ivoire introduce these projects?

Eric Poby: There were three main reasons for the projects with biometrics. First of all we wanted to provide the citizens of Côte d’Ivoire with secured documents. Secondly, we needed to adapt our travel documents to international standards. Another reason was we wanted to manage the migration flows, knowing where people crossing our borders came from, went to and how long they stayed.

Why did you choose biometrics?

Eric Poby: Biometrics was the best option if we wanted to guarantee the security of the passports. We work with the picture and fingerprints of the holder of the documents. It is the best way to establish the person holding the passport is really the person he claims to be. Previously there were often long queues at borders, biometrics proved to be a good solution to be able to work securely and fast. You must understand that it was an important choice, we had no experience with biometrics. It was very courageous of our President, our Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior to make this choice. 

How have the projects evolved?

Eric Poby: We are very satisfied with how things are going now. As to the ordinary passports, some 80 per cent of the project is finished, and so far we have distributed over 180,.000 passports. So that is quite a lot. With regards to visa, so far we have equipped 20 embassies with the necessary equipment and you can say that we are halfway through the project. By the end of this year, all embassies of Côte d’Ivoire will be able to supply biometric visa. 

What was the reaction of Côte d’Ivoire citizens to the project? 

Eric Poby: At first people were skeptical and suspicious. They thought the information would be used to spy on them. But we ran an important information campaign, with flyers, ads in newspapers and ads on television explaining to everyone why we introduced the new passports and visa and how they had to proceed to obtain these secured documents. Now everyone has gotten used to the biometric documents. And when they see the lines at immigration are shorter, they appreciate the advantages of these passports and visa. And also they are quite proud of the fact that Côte d’Ivoire was a pioneer when it comes to this technology. We see this as our role in the region, to be the first ones to introduce new technology and allow other countries to profit from our experience. 

Zetes is your technical partner for these projects. What’s your view on this partnership?

Eric Poby: It truly is a partnership. We chose Zetes because of their good reputation, and they have certainly lived up to that. There are still some minor issues that we have to resolve, but these are really minor. We are in permanent contact with the people from Zetes, by telephone, by mail or face-to-face. There is rarely a day that we do not have contact with them. We are very happy to work with Zetes and plan to work together on future projects too.