04 Historical context: Frelimo, IFIs and agricultural policy After independence the Frelimo government adopted a socialist agricultural programme. In the countryside Restructuring Program, the PRE in 1987, agriculture and land policies moved even more towards markets and foreign investment. this meant state ownership of land, state One of the most harmful interventions by planning and state control, along with the World Bank in Mozambique was the the collectivization of farming systems. destruction of the cashew nut industry. Frelimo took for granted that people In the 1960s and 1970s Mozambique was in the countryside would support this, the largest producer of cashew nuts in since the rural population had been very the world, accounting for about half of supportive of Frelimo during the liberation all global cashew nut production. In 1995, struggle. The Frelimo government was the World Bank required Mozambique therefore surprised to find that people in to lift protections for the cashew sector rural areas resisted their approach in the as a condition to access US$400 million countyside. According to Wuyts (2001), in funding. It argued that removing Frelimo did not consider that not everyone protections would reduce export rates in the countryside would agree with for raw cashews, stimulate demand and state ownership and control, and Frelimo encourage competition between exporters overlooked the importance of commercial (McMillan et al, 2002; Abbas, 2014). This agriculture to rural livelihoods. resulted in 10,000 people becoming Rural resistance resulted in a decline in agricultural production and productivity – and finally in a famine in the early 1980s. To address this, the Frelimo government unemployed and peasants losing their income. The government of Mozambique had to work in secret to rebuild the industry (Hanlon, 2016). introduced reforms which combined Across Southern Africa, the World Bank central planning with the promotion of and development agencies – most notably commercial agriculture, under a brand of the United States Agency for International market socialism. Development (USAID) and the United Reforms included the distribution of stateowned land to multinational enterprises; and the transformation of state-farms into cooperatives to stimulate small-scale commercial farming (O’Laughlin,1996, 24 p.5). With the adoption of Economic Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) – have pushed for similar neoliberal policies, the reorientation of agricultural production towards international markets and the collaterization of land through land reform (Adalima, 2016). Fast-tracking Financialization - International Financial Institutions’ Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Mozambique