It was founded in 1993, and the island nation joined the World Organization of the Scout Movement in the same year.

Scouting in Kiribati was first introduced in 1914, when the country was known as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.

After the Japanese occupation during World War II, a British Scoutmaster working with local Scouts was imprisoned and killed.

[1] The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were separated administratively in the 1970s to become the independent Commonwealth nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu, and their Scouting movements took different paths.

The membership badge of the Kiribati Scout Association features a green coconut.