Kenyan authorities pushed back by 12 months the deadline for citizens adopting e-passports.
This is the second time the deadline has been extended.
The old passport was initially scheduled to be phased out by 1 September 2019, but this was later pushed back to 1 March 2020.
The Ministry of Interior says the deadline has now been extended to 1 March 2021 to “enable 1.8 million Kenyans – mostly in the diaspora” who are still holding the old document to get the new biometric version.
The government said it had set up passport centers in Dubai, Johannesburg, Berlin, Paris, London, and Washington DC to that end.
The government says e-passports are intended to minimize fraud, identity theft, forgery, and passport skimming.
It shared a statement explaining the decision on Twitter on Monday: