By Albert Allotey
Accra, Oct. 17, GNA – Mr Labram Massawudu Musah, the Executive Director of Vision for Accelerated Sustainable Development – Ghana, (VAST Ghana), has been re-elected as a member of the Movendi International board for the period 2026 to 2030.
Mr Musah first joined the Board in 2022, and his election followed more than two decades of work at the intersection of public health policy advocacy, taxation, and community mobilization.
He was recognised more importantly for his efforts in holding harm industry including alcohol, and unhealthy food industry accountable in Ghana and beyond.
The election was held at the 71st Session of the Movendi International World Congress, held in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, from October 2 to 7, 2026.
The World Congress is the highest decision-making body of the movement.
A statement signed by Jennifer Maame Ama Owusu, Communication Manager, VAST Ghana and copied to the Ghana News Agency said the session adopted a new four-year strategic plan, and elected members of the Board to lead Movendi International to 2030,
The occasion was also used to mark the movement’s 175th anniversary.
The statement indicated that the organisation is the largest global social movement for development through alcohol prevention, with half a million people in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Americas and Europe and more than a century and a half of community action behind it.
It said over the new mandate, Movendi International would put its Strategic Road Map 2027 to 2030 into action and advance toward a Framework Convention on Alcohol Control, the kind of instrument that transformed tobacco control under the WHO FCTC.
It stated that the road map would cover six areas of action: building a grass-roots-driven people’s movement, advocating population-level alcohol policy solutions, exposing and counteracting alcohol industry interference, supporting communities from prevention to recovery, promoting alcohol-free environments, and shaping public discourse.
“Two priorities sit at the heart of the Road Map. The first is to increase the people’s movement by training and equipping member organizations and building communities of practice and regional hubs of excellence, with young people and people with lived experience leading the way.
“The second is setting the agenda, so that the voices of affected communities reach the World Health Assembly, post-2030 development talks, human rights processes, regional bodies, national Parliaments and local communities,” it emphasised.
The statement said Africa was the alcohol industry’s most aggressively pursued growth frontier: the world’s youngest population, rapidly growing cities, expanding retail and digital marketing, and alcohol policy that was often weak or unenforced.
“Ghana is one of the few African countries with both a national alcohol policy and a functioning civil society movement able to hold government and industry to account. That experience now sits at the table where the movement’s strategy is decided,” it mentioned.
It explained that fewer than one in five adults in Ghana are established drinkers, yet the harm reaches many more through road traffic injuries, household spending, violence, and children growing up in alcohol-affected homes.
It stated, “In plain terms, the alcohol industry returns a fraction of what alcohol harm costs Ghana every year.”
Mr Musah at the Congress spoke on the topic “Taking people inside change in exposing alcohol industry,” and presented VAST Ghana’s work on monitoring and countering alcohol industry interference in Ghana.
On his re-election he stated, “It is a privilege to be entrusted with this mandate again, and I take it as a mandate for Ghana and for Africa, not for myself.
“In the last four years we have helped shift the conversation globally: alcohol is no longer discussed only as an individual’s habit, but as an obstacle to development, a driver of cancer and other non-communicable diseases, and an industry that must be held accountable.
“The next four years must be about turning that recognition into binding obligations on governments in Ghana, across Africa, and at the international level,” Mr Musah said.
Some civil society actors in a congratulatory message stated, “The re-election of Labram Musah to the Movendi International board is a vote of confidence not only in him, but in what Ghana has built.
“He returns to the global table with evidence-based policy advocacy and a track record of which Ghana is proud of,” said Solomon Foli, Programmes Manager, NCD Alliance Ghana.
Mr Godfred Tweneboa Kodua, Research and Policy Advocacy Manager, VAST Ghana said, “Our work on alcohol and tobacco control has always been local at its root and global in its ambition.
“It also raises the bar for us at home: the campaigns we run here will now be judged against the best practice in the world,”
GNA
Edited by Kenneth Odeng Adade