THE CONTESTED INFLUENCE OF IFI’S OVER LAND AND AGRICULTURAL POLICY land and give the state ultimate power to decide what happens with the land. In this way, communities will no longer have the capacity to exercise and assert their agency (Monjane, 2021). A World Bank funded project on Agriculture and Natural Resources Landscape Management was approved at the same time as the launch of the revision of the Land Policy. In 2016, the Government of Mozambique adopted the National Programme for Sustainable Development (Programa Nacional de Desenvolvimento Sustentável), now known as Sustenta, implemented by the National Sustainable Development Fund (FNDS), a multi-sector investment and coordination fund. The World Bank is funding Sustenta primarily through the Integrated Landscape and Forest Management, now the Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) Portfolio. This is a nearly US$500 million portfolio of diverse natural resource management and sustainable rural development interventions. It combines on-the-ground investments, technical assistance, analytical work, and results-based financing to improve the livelihoods of rural communities by promoting small and medium enterprises linked to agriculture and natural resources (TA, 2019). Even as the IMF moved to withdraw budget and sector support in response to the disclosure of illicit government backed loans, Sustenta received millions of dollars from the World Bank. A section of the peasantry celebrated the launch of Sustena because it was presented by the government as an initiative that would benefit small-scale farmers. However, many argue that Sustenta is not really for the peasantry: They select the so-called emerging farmers and give them the funds and tractors. Some are government officials and party leaders and become beneficiaries, but we know they are not peasants4. The goal of Sustenta is to create a new class of Mozambican capitalist farmers through linking smallholder and peasant farmers into commercial value chains, and through individual land titling, (Ntauazi et al., 2020). To qualify for for Sustenta farmers should farm a minimum number of hectares, be able to hire labour and have a proven ability to repay the funds. The majority of the Mozambican peasantry, who cultivate between 0.9 and 1.5 hectares of land, do not seem to be eligible for this programme. The only way they can participate indirectly is either to serve as labourers or to ‘lease’ their land to larger farmers. This approach is in line with the ideologies and policies of IFIs discussed above. These institutions contend that in order to respond to current challenges of poverty 4 Interview, peasant farmer from Nampula province, September 2021. 27 Fast-tracking Financialization - International Financial Institutions’ Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Mozambique