The financialization of pandemic risk: a case study of the world bank’s pandemic emergency financing facility in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Based on rising international concern with pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, this dissertation considers the financialization of pandemic risk and the relationships and knowledge which are generated in the process. By considering the case study of the World Bank’s Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) as it was used to address the COVID-19 pandemic response, I investigate the role of private financial capital in addressing infectious disease outbreaks in developing country contexts. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork through participant observation, interviews, and document analysis at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., USA; Dakar, Senegal; and community-based research in the Kédougou and Kolda regions of Senegal, this dissertation considers the ways in which different approaches to health may inform the future of innovative finance to generate holistic, preventive approaches to infectious disease outbreaks. While major global health and financial institutions emphasize the importance of using economic tools for pandemic prevention and response investments, this research examines the ways that economic knowledge is valued across the spectrum of actors involved in World Bank projects, I.e. the World Bank, investors, partner organizations, local governments, health care workers, and communities. Best practices at the World Bank headquarters differ across global practices as well as departments in terms of priority issues and analytical approach. In Senegal, the World Bank’s operational practices for pandemic risk are impacted by government priorities, national and international policy, geography, and cultural realities. As a result, knowledge of pandemic risk is entangled with multispecies bodies and geopolitical histories as international development agencies seek to address pandemic risk in Senegalese bodies.