An Idea Worth Stealing from SA: Let Banks Renew IDs and East African Passports. I Would Throw In The Mobile Phone Firms Too South Africa has extended a pilot programme to renew national IDs and passports at banks to March 2024. It's one of the brightest ideas to come out of SA in recent times. Worth copying. In future, in East Africa where there are regional banks like Equity, KCB, even Standard Chartered, for example, a Kenyan in Uganda would renew her passport at an Equity branch in Kampala without having to travel to Nairobi for that, and a Ugandan in Nairobi could renew his passport at a participating KCB branch in Kenya. In Uganda, one already provides most of the key information for a passport at the bank while paying for the document. In most of East Africa, the process of registering for a mobile phone Simcard is pretty much the same as that required for a passport, so maybe telcos could get a slice of the action. There would be a dramatic improvement in the pace at which passports are issued, and take away all the madness at the Immigration offices. When we think of the regional integration of the 21st century, these are the issues that define it, and less so fighting over cross border trade trade in milk, chicken, onions, and tomatoes. That would require a flight of imagination and boldness from the political systems. Do they have the cojones?