E-Citizen outage: State to issue travelers with visas upon entry to Kenya

The Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs has clarified that Kenya-bound travelers will be granted VISAs upon arrival, due to difficulty in passport processing.

In a statement on July 27, the Ministry has informed the passengers of a challenge in the e-citizen platform that aids in the processing of Visas.

"The Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs has the honor to inform you that there is currently a challenge in the Government e-citizen platform, which is impacting the processing of e-visa. Therefore, travelers will be issued a visa upon arrival at all entry points to Kenya," Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing'oei said in a statement.

Further, airlines have been asked to onboard all travelers destined for Kenya.

The statement comes in the back of the Government confirming a cyber-attack on the e-Citizen platform.

Speaking during an interview with Spice FM on Thursday morning, CS Owalo said that the attack was reported earlier in the week as the hackers slowed the system and tried to break into it unsuccessfully.

"Yes, the e-Citizen platform was hacked and we are addressing it. They tried jamming the system by making more than ordinary requests to the system. However, no data has been accessed or lost," stated Owalo.

He added that the government was ready to amp up its security measures to continue digitizing its services.

"We are not just coming up with instant remedial solutions to address the current attack but we are ensuring that around this digitalization space, we will build an elaborate risk mitigation framework for purposes of sustainable digitalization," he added.

Owalo however assured Kenyans that no sensitive data was compromised by the hackers in the process of their attempt.