Any serious assessment of Ghana's passport and visa system must begin with the people it is supposed to serve. There are an estimated three to four million Ghanaians living outside the country.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, five countries alone, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Canada, account for nearly 90 per cent of Ghanaians living in the OECD area. The United States hosts the largest number, with significant concentrations in New York, Washington DC, Virginia, and New Jersey.

The United Kingdom is home to the second-largest diaspora community outside Africa. Italy and Germany between them host tens of thousands more, with Germany recording over 23,000 Ghanaian passport holders officially. Canada and Australia round out the picture, with Sydney alone hosting more than half of all Ghanaian-born Australians.

These are not small numbers. They represent families sending remittances that, after cocoa, gold, and tourism, constitute one of Ghana's most important sources of foreign exchange. They represent investors, skilled professionals, students, and tourists who travel back regularly, bring capital with them, and in many cases intend to return permanently.

They also represent people who have spent years, in some cases decades, navigating a passport and visa system that has too often treated them as administrative problems rather than valued citizens and partners.

The good news is that the current administration has made a genuine start. The chip-embedded passport launched in April 2025 brings Ghana into compliance with International Civil Aviation Organisation standards.

The standard application fee was reduced to GHS 350, a meaningful improvement on what it was before. A real-time tracking system now allows applicants to monitor their applications, and a courier delivery service through Ghana Post and Shark Express means that passports reach applicants at home rather than requiring a return trip to a collection point. These changes matter and deserve acknowledgement.

The honest follow-up question, however, is whether they go far enough and fast enough for a country that is preparing to chair the African Union, actively courting foreign investors, and telling the world it is open for business. The answer, frankly, is no.

The reforms address symptoms. What Ghana needs now is a wholesale technological overhaul that makes the entire passport and visa journey digital, affordable, fast, and essentially free of human gatekeeping at every stage.

The countries that Ghana should be studying are not the obvious Western examples. Kenya's eCitizen platform is one of the most instructive models on the African continent. It allows citizens and applicants anywhere in the world to apply for passports, driving licences, business registrations, and numerous other government services through a single digital portal.

Passport applications are processed and ready for collection within ten working days for standard applications and three days for urgent ones. The system accepts mobile money payments, international cards, and bank transfers, produces instant digital receipts, and sends automated SMS notifications at every stage of processing.

The entire interaction between citizen and state can be completed without visiting an office. Ghana has the technical capacity and the institutional framework to implement an equivalent system. The question is political will and investment priority.

For Ghanaians in the diaspora, the single most important reform would be the creation of authorised biometric capture points in cities with significant Ghanaian communities outside Accra. This means London, Birmingham, Manchester, New York, Washington DC, Toronto, Rome, Milan, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Sydney.

The Ghana High Commission in London and the Consulate-General in New York already exist, but they are chronically understaffed for the volume of applications they receive and their appointment slots fill within hours of becoming available.

Authorised partner capture points at selected bank branches, pharmacy chains such as Boots in the United Kingdom, or post office facilities would distribute the biometric workload and remove the need for diaspora members to take days off work and travel long distances to reach a Ghanaian mission.

This is not a novel idea. The United Kingdom's passport renewal system already allows citizens to submit applications entirely online, with biometric data captured at a network of Post Office branches across the country.

The United States Global Entry programme allows trusted travellers to pre-enrol biometric data through a distributed network of enrolment centres. Estonia's e-residency programme, now serving over 100,000 digital residents from 170 countries, processes identity verification through a network of accredited partner locations globally. Ghana does not need to invent any of this. It needs to adapt and implement what already works.

The issue of affordability is one that policymakers must address directly and honestly. The GHS 350 standard fee is a reduction, but it remains a significant sum for ordinary Ghanaians living in countries with high costs of living who must additionally factor in travel costs to reach an application centre, potential childcare, lost earnings from time off work, and the cost of courier or postal returns for documents.

A transparent, tiered fee structure that distinguishes between standard processing, priority processing, and emergency processing, with each tier clearly defined by processing time and cost, would help applicants plan accurately.

For Ghanaians born abroad who are applying for first-time documentation of their citizenship, the fee structure should acknowledge that assembling documentation across two countries is inherently more complex and should not attract additional charges beyond the standard fee.

Visa processing for visitors, tourists, and investors arriving from outside Ghana also requires urgent structural reform. The current electronic visa system is in development, which is progress, but the timeline for its full implementation must be publicly committed to and transparently monitored.

For the countries that send the largest numbers of visitors to Ghana, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, and China, the standard should be a fully automated e-visa decision within five working days of a complete application submission. No embassy visit. No sponsor letter from a Ghanaian host.

No pre-approval process that assumes the visitor has reliable contacts in Ghana. A clean digital portal, a published checklist of requirements, an automated acknowledgement on submission, and a decision delivered to the applicant's email within five working days.

The technology to make this happen exists and is affordable. Rwanda's e-visa portal, launched in 2014, processes applications within 72 hours and has been credited by the Rwanda Development Board as a significant factor in the country's sustained growth in tourism and business travel.

Ghana's tourism sector, particularly the December in GH campaign which attracts tens of thousands of visitors annually, would benefit enormously from a visa system that a first-time visitor to Ghana can navigate without assistance, stress, or uncertainty about whether their approval will arrive before their departure date.

Payment infrastructure is the quiet failure that undermines every other reform. An applicant in Rome or Toronto should be able to pay their passport or visa fee using a debit card, a credit card, PayPal, Wise, or mobile money, receive an instant digital receipt, and never have to wonder whether their payment was registered.

The current system's reliance on designated bank transactions, with the attendant risks of failed payments, unverifiable receipts, and no clear dispute resolution process, is a point of friction that technology eliminates entirely.

A payment gateway integrated with the application portal and connected to the government's core banking infrastructure is a standard feature of modern e-government architecture, not an aspirational goal.

For second-generation Ghanaians, the children of the diaspora who hold British, American, Italian, or Canadian passports and are seeking to formalise their Ghanaian heritage through citizenship documentation, the process needs a dedicated digital pathway.

The National Identification Authority and the Passport Office must develop an integrated online portal that allows applicants to submit scanned originals of foreign birth certificates, parental documentation, and supporting evidence.

Document verification should be handled through secure inter-agency communication with foreign registries and certified translation services, not through applicants being required to present originals in person at a Ghanaian mission. Several Gulf states have implemented similar systems for complex citizenship applications, and there is no technical barrier to Ghana doing the same.

None of this requires Ghana to build entirely new institutions. It requires the existing institutions, the Ghana Immigration Service, the Passport Office, the National Identification Authority, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ghana Post network, to coordinate under a unified digital architecture with clear accountability for delivery timelines.

It requires a modest but sustained investment in server infrastructure, application development, and staff training. And it requires a public commitment from the government, with measurable targets and published progress reports, so that the millions of Ghanaians abroad and the hundreds of thousands of visitors who want to experience Ghana can hold the system to account when it falls short.

Ghana's moment on the continental and international stage is real. The AU chairmanship in 2027, the deepening bilateral relationships with the United States, the United Kingdom, and Korea, and the December tourism surge all point to a country that is growing in confidence and reach.

The passport and visa system is the front door to that country. It should be the first thing that tells visitors and returning citizens that Ghana is serious about their time, their money, and their connection to this place. Right now, it too often tells them the opposite. The technology to change that is available, affordable, and proven. The moment to use it is now.

About the author:

Dominic Senayah is an England-United Kingdom-based International Relations professional and policy analyst specialising in African political economy, humanitarian governance, and migration diplomacy. He holds an MA in International Relations from the UK, writes on trade policy, institutional reform, and Ghana-UK relations for audiences across Africa, the United Kingdom, and the broader Global South.