Ethiopian Airlines has partnered with the African Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (Africa CDC) for the implementation of the African Union Trusted Travel Pass to make continental travel easier and safer amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following this development, Africa CDC has mobilised a broad multi-stakeholder public private partnership with the help of its strategic partners, the PanaBIOS Consortium and Econet, and with the objective of addressing current challenges posed by citizens’ and institutions’ difficulty in accessing accurate health information, high costs and inconvenience in cross border travel, and poor data for health policy and biosecurity planning.
The “Trusted Travel” pass program will ensure country regulations regarding COVID-19 travel requirements are met with minimal room for error and hassle to the travelling public. Ethiopian Airlines’ customers will now enjoy hassle-free travel experience with their travel pass helping them verify whether their medical information meets various COVID-19 regulations of their destination.
Ethiopian has been the pioneer in introducing new technologies to make travel contactless and convenient in an effort to curb the spread of the pandemic and restore passengers’ confidence in air travel. This latest partnership considerably deepens this longstanding tradition by boosting the safety of passengers and nations alike and reaffirms Ethiopian’s strong commitment to being a major part of the African pandemic recovery effort.
Commenting on the implementation of travel pass, Mr. Getinet Tadesse, chief information officer at Ethiopian Airlines said, “we are offering new digital opportunities to our passengers so as to fully and safely restore air travel. We are pleased to have introduced a digital platform that will be pivotal in increasing the number of passengers while making air travel safer. The solution is capable of addressing passengers’ travel needs during COVID-19 pandemic as it helps them validate their test and vaccination documents before departure. As a safety-first airline, we are striving to make travel safe and seamless especially with regard to the implementation of COVID 19 prevention strategies.”
The trusted travel pass solution will help to validate test and vaccination certificates and verify that they are sufficient for their route and share testing or vaccination certificates with airlines and authorities to facilitate travel. The solution will also avoid fraudulent documentation and make air travel more convenient.
Dr. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa CDC, while welcoming Ethiopian’s pioneering spirit, also underscored how such partnerships are critical in the present context.
According to him, “the scale of the challenge presented by Covid-19 demands an unprecedented level of both innovation and cooperation, which is why Ethiopian’s laudable decision to come on board Trusted Travel marks a watershed in the continent’s ongoing fightback against this pandemic’s quest to suppress the Africa’s development ambitions.”
