01 INTRODUCTION The first case study focuses on labour to take out loans using land as guarantee. and social protections and shows how the These policy approaches are very likely to World Bank used the Covid-19 pandemic lead to landlessness and to force small to advance its social protection agenda farmers who become landless, to seek i) by replacing the idea of universal social protection. entitlements with highly targeted, shortterm, grants that do not address the root causes of poverty, and that incorporate poor households into financial markets through credit and debt; and ii) through financialization of cash transfers by outsourcing payment systems to financial service providers. Although outsourcing proved impossible to implement and the government ultimately had to insource the program, this has had considerable material and human cost for Mozambicans. While evidence across Africa has shown that the financialization of social protection, through the bundling of cash transfers with financial services under the guise of financial inclusion, has negative The study concludes that IFI’s used the Covid-19 moment of crisis to fast-track the financialization of development, a process whereby financial institutions, markets and instruments become increasingly predominant in development policy making and outcomes. The study also points to resistance by both the state and civil society. Whether these forms of resistance can contribute to a strong developmental state, a state that commits to a peoplecentred development model, to human development over market interests, hinges on the power of globalized social movements to claw back control from financial capitalism. consequences for social development (Torkelson, 2020), the World Bank has nevertheless continued to push its agenda, aided by the power it wields over countries (Castel-Branco, 2021b). The second case study focuses on land and agricultural policy. It shows how the World Bank imposed conditions that land be treated as a commodity to invest in, an untapped resource that should be liberalised and absorbed into the capitalist market, with small farmers encouraged 10 Fast-tracking Financialization - International Financial Institutions’ Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Mozambique