Hamilton Caranda Martin
CMF Ventures – Serengeti Hemp & Green Energy Holdings
CEO – Founder
CMF Ventures LLC was Founded by Hamilton Caranda-Martin III, a native of New York, Ghana & Liberia.
The Caranda-Martin work is his passion for an African Environmental and Agricultural Revolution using Agricultural Commodities and Renewable Waste offtakes. Impacting food security, poverty reduction and job creation, while introducing a shared valued economics that directly supports women farm coops, smallholders’ agriculture in Ghana and Regional Africa to produce agricultural offtakes, renewable offtakes, and plant biomass for manufacturing conversions with a planet carbon reduction ESG priority.
While working on a partnership he is a part of at Hepworth Ag. Farms, Hepworth Hemp & CBD Farms, Caranda Martin realized he could make a larger impact on his birth continent of Africa using maize grain, soybean and the industrial Kenaf plant, as well as the Industrial hemp plant. Biomass agricultural commodities are abundant in Ghana and throughout Africa, including waste renewables as products. Naturally enabling Ghana to be a player in the fast-growing green supply chain and climate mitigation growing markets.
With 11 Countries that legalized industrial hemp in Africa and the beginning of an increase demand for green regenerative bast fiber, the potential is enormous. CMF Ventures was a natural next step, using a nimble approach that transitions to a fast dominant growth strategy.
Caranda-Martin recalls some of his greatest memories while growing up in Liberia and traveling with his ethno-botanist grandmother. Caranda Martin traveled throughout the African Serengeti, Liberia, the Republic of Cabo Verde, Cape Palmas, in regional west and east Africa. Studying plant functions, agriculture, tree crops, land usages, and the healing properties of plants.
Studying holistic recipes from traditional African healers’ plant formulations, traveling in the west African rain forest exploring plant abilities, and collecting wild harvested herbs, Guinea hemp, bush medicine herbs, botanical teas, while honoring our rural tribal cultures, and enjoying specialty dry aging roots to make wellness tea products, was my first agricultural startup, Serengeti Teas and Provisions Global. (www.serengetiteas.com – operating out of the Hudson Valley of New York State and Eastern Africa.) The power of plants, nature inorganic environmental waste conflicts, and Africa’s agricultural resources motivated me to continue this work by creating CMF Ventures LLC USA and CMF Ventures Ghana Limited.
A 5th Generation farmer, with family farming roots in the Lofa, Bassa, Maryland, Nimba, and Bong Regions of Liberia, where the Caranda family specialized in Tree Crop Products, Earth Mineral Mining and African Agricultural Commodities before the Liberian war. Caranda Martin has over 2 decades working in and out of Africa. Which comes with an abundance of experience.
- Academic Training in Communications Arts, Agronomy, Botany, and Agricultural Development.
- Recognized as a Ted Global Fellow (2007) Arusha, Tanzania. Ted Africa, Chapter 1
- Distinguished as an Africa Platform Fellow (2009) Harvard Club NYC. – Chambers of Commerce, South Africa.
- Philanthropic projects have included the creation of Project Momentum Liberia, which is a partnership with Direct Relief International, delivering, from 2003 to date, over $15 million in medical aid to Liberia.
- Agricultural projects include the work done with ACDI/VOCA which impacted three hundred Liberian Cocoa farmers in the Bong County Region. This was in collaboration with Ex. Liberian President H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Office.
Caranda Martin founded Serengeti Teas & Provisions GLB. to bring the African continent’s best African Wellness and specialty African herbal teas, premium teas, cocoas, spices, and coffees to a wider audience. Simultaneously spotlighting the profile of East African and Southern African Smallholder Farming Partners, and Holistic African Medicine.
Articles continue to appear in numerous media outlets including the New York Times, the Huffington Post, Financial Times. the Guardian (UK), the Amsterdam News (NY), the Daily News (NY), and several American TV Networks including CNN International.
Caranda Martin focus is on African agriculture, culinary farming, and ecological farming with environmental protection practices. In North America he has a partnership with Hepworth Farms & Hepworth CBD Organics in the Hudson Valley of New York State. On the African continent he participates in ventures designed to improve the African agricultural sector and by extension, impact the life of the African Women Coops & Smallholder Farmers.