THE CONTESTED INFLUENCE OF IFI’S OVER LAND AND AGRICULTURAL POLICY law that does not exist in Mozambique. the study itself, there is a fear that the This is to prevent ‘experimental’ top- collateralization of land titles could be a down programmes like Sustenta from mechanism for creating a land market and opening the door for international financial consequently a mechanism that will lead institutions and other actors to exercise to landlessness in Mozambique (Hamela et soft or hard power in the agricultural al., 2021, p. 24). This is reinforced by the fact sector. According to one AMDER leader, that USAID and DFID have been pushing programmes like Sustenta have nothing for land collateralization. This neoliberal to do with the reality and complexity of view sees land as a commodity to invest Mozambique’s agrarian question. The in, an untapped resource that should be existence of a law will allow for public liberalised and absorbed into the capitalist debate, at least at the parliamentary level, market, ostensibly to reduce the high levels and thus democratise agricultural policy. of malnutrition and rural poverty in Africa Mozambique was one of the countries targeted in the race to liberalize land government to attract foreign investment Civil society demands in the times of the Covid-19 pandemic (and beyond) in the agriculture and mining sectors. In The neoliberal policies introduced in due to its geographical location, fertile land and the efforts of the Mozambican recent years, various investment projects for agriculture have been proposed and/ or implemented in the country, leading to conflicts over land and the displacement of peasant communities (Wise, 2016). Within the scope of the National Land Policy Review process, a study was commissioned to assess the feasibility of 29 (World Bank, 2003). Mozambique have been challenged, by organised civil society. UNAC, Mozambique’s largest and most important agricultural movement, was formed as a response to the neoliberal shift Mozambique took in the late 1980s by opening up to the market economy. implementing a loan program, offering the When Mozambique made the transition to DUAT as a guarantee (Hamela, Macaringue, a market economy through the adoption of 2020; Rose, 2021). As an extension of IMF and World Bank programs, peasants the National Land Policy revision, CSOs in various parts of Mozambique feared are sceptical about the prospects of the possible disappearance of peasants’ land collateralization. As expressed in cooperatives that already existed. This was Fast-tracking Financialization - International Financial Institutions’ Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Mozambique