03 The contested influence of IFI’s over labour and social protection policy Over the last decades, social protection Evidence across Africa has shown that has increasing acceptance in global the financialization of social protection, policy circles. However there are through the bundling of cash transfers different views on what exactly social with financial services under the guise protection is. of financial inclusion, has had negative In 2012, the World Bank launched its Social Protection and Labour Strategy. This advocated highly targeted safety-nets, coupled with opportunities for productive employment through public works consequences for social development (Torkelson, 2020). Nevertheless, the World Bank has continued to push its agenda, aided by the power it wields over countries (Castel-Branco, 2021b). programmes for able-bodied adults of As chair of the Multi-Donor Trustfund for working age (World Bank, 2012). The World Social Protection, the World Bank was able Bank’s latest innovation, Adaptive Social to influence the design and implementation Protection, reduces universal entitlements of emergency responses to the Covid-19 to short-term, shock-responsiveness pandemic in Mozambique. However, its programs. Longer-term needs, the World attempt to leverage loans and grants to Bank suggests, can be more effectively advance its global policy agenda were addressed through the diversification contested by both the state and civil of livelihoods and incorporation of poor society, albeit indirectly. households into financial markets through credit and debt (World Bank, 2020). This section begins by providing an overview of Mozambique’s social protection system prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, before exploring the politics of policymaking with regards to the Programa de Acção Social Directa - Pós Emergência (PASD-PE) - Direct Social Action Program- ...more than a year from the start of the pandemic, only 378,717 new households have received their first three-month instalment and there is no set date for the second. 14 Fast-tracking Financialization - International Financial Institutions’ Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Mozambique