The Kenyan government has announced that once students finish their KCSE national exams, they will be eligible to receive the new third-generation IDs known as Maisha cards.

According to PS Julius Bitok from the State Department for Citizen Services, students will get the new IDs sooner than expected as they leave high school. This is part of the government’s plan to centralize learners’ data, making it easier to register for higher education and apply for HELB loans and scholarships.

A total of 965,501 candidates have been registered to sit for the 2024 KCSE exams which started on Tuesday, October 22nd.

Progress in issuing the Maisha cards has improved after a court order that stopped the Ministry of Interior from processing them was lifted in February 2024.

The government expects the Maisha cards to bring Kenya in line with regional and international best practices. It noted that the main advantage of these cards is their high security, making them difficult to forge or tamper with.

In the past, high school graduates had to visit various government offices in their areas to apply for National IDs. The process was on most occasions slow, with documents sometimes taking weeks to be ready.

Applying for ID to cost 300, replacement 1,000; 34-page passport 7,500

Sometimes, people applying for ID cards would get tired of waiting and forget about them. In August 2024, the National Registration Bureau announced that over 400,000 ID cards were uncollected.

As the cards are rolled out quickly, many Kenyans have raised concerns and worries about them. One feature they are particularly cautious about is that the IDs will expire after ten years.

PS Bitok explained that renewing the IDs is important to keep a person’s information up to date, including biometrics and changes in their facial features.