Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister has committed to expanding passport application services across the country, with ambitious plans to ensure no region remains without access by December.
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa announced that all seven regions currently lacking passport application centres will have operational facilities by the end of 2025. The initiative represents a major shift in how the government delivers consular services to citizens outside the capital.
The Bolgatanga centre in the Upper East Region will launch this month as the first of the new facilities, marking the beginning of what officials describe as a nationwide decentralization effort.
Currently, Ghana operates 13 passport application centres across nine regions. These include three centres in Greater Accra, two each in the Ashanti and Northern Regions, and one each in Upper West, Eastern, Central, Volta, Western and Bono. The six newly created regions and Bolgatanga have been waiting for their own facilities.
The expansion comes as the ministry works to address longstanding complaints about passport accessibility and processing delays. As of mid-September, officials had printed 161,824 chip-embedded passports and delivered 122,895, clearing a backlog exceeding 70,000 applications.
Ablakwa has framed the improvements as part of broader reforms aimed at eliminating what he calls the era of exploitation by middlemen who charged desperate applicants inflated fees for faster service.
The government introduced enhanced chip-embedded passports earlier this year featuring significantly upgraded security features. Whether the ministry can meet its December deadline for establishing centres in all remaining regions will test the administration’s capacity to deliver on infrastructure promises during an election year.
For now, residents in areas without centres must travel considerable distances to apply for passports an inconvenience the expansion aims to eliminate.
