The Republic of the Sudan started issuing electronic passports to citizens in May 2009. The new electronic passport will be issued in three categories. The citizen's passport (ordinary passport) will be issued to ordinary citizens and will contain 48 pages. Business men/women who need to travel often will have a commercial passport that will contain 64 pages. Smaller passports that contain 32 pages only will be issued to children. The microprocessor chip will contain the holder's information in addition to fingerprints. Cost to obtain a new passport is SDG 400, and the validity of the citizen's passport will be 5 years, and 7 years for the commercial one.
More Details about the electronic Passport:
A biometric passport, also known as an e-passport or e-Passport, is a combined paper and electronic passport (hence the e-, as in e-mail) that uses biometrics to authenticate the identity of travelers. It uses contactless smart card technology, including a microprocessor chip (computer chip) and antenna (for both power to the chip and communication) embedded in the front or back cover, or centre page, of the passport. Document and chip characteristics are documented in the International Civil Aviation Organisation's (ICAO) Doc 9303[1][2][3]. The passport's critical information is both printed on the data page of the passport and stored in the chip. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is used to authenticate the data stored electronically in the passport chip making it virtually impossible to forge.
The currently standardized biometrics used for this type of identification system are facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, and iris recognition. These were adopted after assessment of several different kinds of biometrics including retinal scan. The ICAO defines the biometric file formats and communication protocols to be used in passports. Only the digital image (usually in JPEG or JPEG2000 format) of each biometric feature is actually stored in the chip. The comparison of biometric features is performed outside the passport chip by electronic border control systems (e-borders). To store biometric data on the contactless chip, it includes a minimum of 32 kilobytes of EEPROM storage memory, and runs on an interface in accordance with the ISO/IEC 14443 international standard, amongst others. These standards ensure interoperability between different countries and different manufacturers of passport books.
