Executive Summary Mozambique was already facing an These amount to $3.7 billion, which is economic, ecological, and political equivalent to the annual national budget. crisis when the Covid-19 pandemic The agricultural sector accounts for 14% was declared. Lockdown measures of investment while social protection in response to Covid-19 resulted in accounts for 9%. additional socioeconomic difficulties. To deal with these difficulties the Mozambican government needed additional funding which they were able to get from the IMF and World Bank. World Bank used the Covid-19 pandemic to advance its social protection agenda in two important ways. The first was to replace the idea of universal entitlements This research report explores how the with highly targeted, short-term, grants IMF and World Bank, in alliance with that do not address the root causes of development agencies, used this additional poverty and inequality. The World Bank funding during the Covid-19 pandemic as argues that longer-term needs could an opportunity to impose conditions which be more effectively addressed through influence policy in two interrelated sectors: the diversification of livelihoods and labour and social protection; and land and incorporation of poor households into agriculture. financial markets through credit and Elements within the state and civil society have challenged the conditions imposed by the IMF and World Bank on Mozambique. Whether these challenges can build into a meaningful movement remains to be seen. debt. The second was the IMF and World Bank insisting on the financialization of public services through the outsourcing of payment systems to financial service providers. Although outsourcing proved impossible to implement and the The first section of this paper provides government eventually had to insource background to IMF and World Bank the program, this has had considerable financing and their push for structural material and human cost for Mozambicans. adjustment policies. In 1987, Mozambique embarked on its first structural adjustment programme which resulted in mass retrenchments, austerity and public debt. Mozambique’s debt was subsequently cancelled, but its economy remained under the control of the IMF. Today, the World Bank funds 53 projects in Mozambique. 7 The second section traces how the The third section explores the World Bank’s approach towards agriculture. The World Bank has pushed over many years for the collateralization of land, that is to move to private ownership of land and encouraging farmers to take loans against the value of land; the incorporation of farmers into global commodity chains; Fast-tracking Financialization - International Financial Institutions’ Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Mozambique