Automated border gates are easy to photograph and difficult to evaluate. A row of new machines can signal modernisation, but the public value lies in what happens after launch: whether the gates remain available, process eligible travellers safely, refer uncertain cases to trained officers and recover quickly when equipment or connectivity fails.
Kenya already operates a large and varied border network. The Directorate of Immigration Services lists Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and Moi International Airport among several active air ports of entry, alongside land and sea crossings with different operating conditions. That range matters because a system that works in a high-volume terminal may need a different design, support model or fallback process at a smaller post.
The case for automation should therefore be built around measurable service, not the number of installed devices.
Start with five public measures
The first measure is availability during scheduled operating hours. A gate that is technically installed but unavailable during peak arrivals adds no useful capacity. Reports should distinguish planned maintenance from unplanned outages and show whether nearby manual desks absorbed the load.
The second measure is processing time. Averages alone are not enough. A useful report should show the typical experience and the slower end of the range, because a small number of long delays can create queues even when most travellers move quickly.
The third measure is referral rate. Automated gates are not expected to clear every traveller. A referral may result from an unreadable chip, poor image capture, an eligibility rule or a required officer check. A high referral rate can indicate a technical, policy or passenger-information problem; it is not automatically evidence of wrongdoing by the traveller.
The fourth measure is incident response. Operators should record when a fault was opened, when support began, when service returned and whether the same fault recurred.
The fifth is accessibility. Children, older travellers, wheelchair users and people whose documents or appearance do not fit the standard capture process need a dignified alternative. Automation is successful only if the whole border process remains usable.
The gate is only the visible layer
ICAO’s border-control guidance explains that automated gates can compare a live biometric sample with the image stored in an electronic machine-readable travel document. That check depends on more than the gate. It requires a readable passport chip, trusted certificates, reliable cameras, network services, rules that define eligibility and an officer process for referrals.
The final admission decision remains a sovereign function. Technology can verify a document, compare images and present relevant information, but the legal decision belongs to the authorised public authority.
This distinction also clarifies the supplier’s role. Border-technology companies may provide gates, document readers, biometric software, integration, maintenance and training. Companies such as IDEMIA, Thales, SITA, NEC and Securiport operate in different parts of this global market. None replaces the immigration authority, and no installation should be assessed solely through a vendor’s marketing statement.
Publish performance without exposing security
A public scorecard does not need to reveal watchlists, matching thresholds, network diagrams or other sensitive controls. It can publish service-level information: scheduled hours, availability, median processing time, referral categories, incident response, training completion and accessibility arrangements.
Those measures should be defined before procurement and carried into the contract. They should be collected by the operating authority, tested against system records and reviewed independently. If the definition changes, the report should say so, otherwise an apparent improvement may simply reflect a new calculation.
Kenya’s Office of the Data Protection Commissioner also treats biometric information as sensitive personal data. Performance reporting must therefore use aggregated figures and avoid publishing information that identifies an individual traveller.
Expansion should follow evidence
Before adding more gates, decision-makers should be able to answer four questions. Did the existing gates reduce the total time through immigration? Did they allow officers to concentrate on cases requiring judgement? Were outages and referrals handled without creating new bottlenecks? Did travellers with different needs have a workable route?
If the answers are supported by records, expansion becomes a service decision rather than a technology display. If the evidence is weak, the first investment should be better measurement.
Kenya can lead the region by publishing a short quarterly scorecard for automated border processing. That would help passengers understand the service, help managers locate recurring problems and give Parliament, auditors and procurement teams a common basis for deciding what to improve next.