to Nat Sakimura, a Kantara founding board director and Open ID Foundation chair, who spent his childhood in Africa.

Kantara provides input to policy bodies such as OECD as well as some inter-government initiatives related to identity management and personal data agency.

Of completed projects, the following are noteworthy: The initiative was established in 2009 by a group of identity management (IDM) technical interoperability organizations using a bi-cameral system of governance.

[14] Responding to industry consortia fragmentation, Kantara aimed to form a unified, transparent and inclusive member organization for digital identity community stakeholders.

Private and public sector relying party organizations (initially from the United States, but globally as of 2024) joined the initiative to develop identity and credential requirements and operate conformance and assurance programs, thus complementing the missions and outputs of other industry consortia, such as PDEC (Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium), Customer Commons the CARIN Alliance,[15] Identity Commons,[16] FIDO Alliance and IDESG (assets transitioned to Kantara Educational Foundation in June 2018[17]).