THE CONTESTED INFLUENCE OF IFI’S OVER LAND AND AGRICULTURAL POLICY As discussed above, the World Bank has access investment to raise productivity used loans and grants as weapons to and compete in international commodity influence policy in line with their ideological chains (World Bank, 2007; 2017). However, and political programme (Gibbon et al., as the following section illustrates, 1993). The result has been the privatization the collaterization of land threatens of Africa’s agricultural systems in a short to accelerate ongoing processes of space of time, with smallholder farmers dispossession, thrusting the expropriated losing out (Monjane et al., forthcoming). into the ranks of the unemployed who While many of the World Bank’s efforts to marketize and commercialise agricultural have used up valuable resources that could Land and agriculture in times of the Covid-19 pandemic: the role of IFIs have benefited smallholder farmers. International financial institutions have The following section explores the World played an important role in Mozambique’s production have failed, even on their own terms (Bernards, 2021), these failed projects Bank’s interventions in the agricultural sector in recent years, focusing on the World Bank’s Partnership Framework with Mozambique for 2017-21. The World Bank argues that roots of rural poverty in agricultural sector for more than forty years. Although the World Bank did not introduce specific interventions in response to the Covid -19 pandemic, they did advance a number of agricultural projects Mozambique lie in the land tenure system, during the Covid-19 pandemic. which does not allow the private ownership In June 2021, the World Bank approved of land. The World Bank argues that not allowing land to be sold, mortgaged, or alienated, does not allow smallholders to access credit. Not having access to credit, the World Bank argues, does not allow small holders to access agricultural inputs and technology, and this undermines agricultural production. If smallholders had private land rights, the World Bank concludes, they would be able to collaterize their land, that is access credit using their land as collateral, and 25 would need social protection. a $150 million loan to create livelihood opportunities in agriculture for farmers in the north of the country, as part of its Partnership Framework with Mozambique for 2017-21, which seeks to promote “climate-smart and socially acceptable solutions across all activities and sectors of intervention - from infrastructure to agriculture, fisheries, and forestry to build resilience and coping mechanisms in preparation of the next set of shocks’’ (World Bank, 2021). Fast-tracking Financialization - International Financial Institutions’ Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Mozambique