Flying from Jakarta to Lombok feels like floating over a sea of clouds with majestic mountaintops suddenly popping up as if to jolt me out of my reverie. Many of them are volcanoes, some active, some dormant. A powerful reminder that in this archipelago, home to 270 million people, nature is queen. But I wasn’t there to admire the wonders of nature. With Anna Bjerde, our Managing Director of Operations, I was on a mission to see how the Bank's projects are improving the lives of millions of Indonesians. And what I saw in Indonesia was the Better Bank in action.
SCALE
I was blown away by the sight of lush rice paddy fields in central Lombok, where a Bank-funded project deployed in more than half of all national irrigation systems is transforming irrigation and rice cultivation for the better.
As Tara Perwitasari, one of the Bank’s Water Resources Management Specialists, passionately explained to us, optimizing water use through upgraded irrigation systems and promoting climate-smart agriculture practices is a winning combo for the rice farmers of Lombok.
This Strategic Irrigation Modernization and Urgent Rehabilitation Project, co-financed with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and implemented across five ministries, aims to improve irrigation services and make irrigation management more transparent. But the project also supports climate-smart agriculture (CSA) pilots, boosting productivity and incomes while saving water and reducing methane emissions.
One farmer shared a moving tale: Thanks to the project, she said, her family’s income tripled, unlocking opportunities once out of reach, like a quality education for her children. The project, she argued, even made for better husbands by freeing up time. “My husband used to spend nine grueling hours manually watering rice fields,” she said. “Now, he does it with just a simple tap on his phone. And I am ready for more!”
What’s more, farmers outside the project areas are starting to adopt CSA practices on their own, inspired by their neighbors’ success. This is how smaller components of a project can also make a big difference.
IMPACT
One of the most inspiring moments of our visit was witnessing the impact of a flagship stunting reduction initiative that reaches 85,000 villages across the country. This initiative, carried out by the Government of Indonesia (across 9 ministries) with support from the World Bank (via a Program for Results and other lending instruments), the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents, and Gavi, the vaccine alliance, is not only impressive in its scale, but also in its impact.
Every year, 8 million mothers and 15 million children receive essential health and nutrition services. And the results speak for themselves. Between 2018 and 2023, the national stunting rate was slashed from 30.8% to 20.5%.
In the words of Lead Health Specialist Somil Nagpal, co-TTL of this game changing operation, along with TTL Anne Provo, Lead Nutrition Specialist: “The Bank is fortunate to be in the position of having inspired that program and having successfully identified the right interventions and supporting the government in implementing them. Preventing stunting is the best investment a country can make.”
According to Somil, what made the initiative successful was the fact that the Bank’s teams managed to work seamlessly across sectors. This was a remarkable achievement that showed the power of collaboration (starting within our own walls), partnership, and government leadership for a shared cause. The Ministry of Health, which was in the driver’s seat, also made full use of hands-on implementation support to build the capacity of its staff. During our meeting with President Jokowi, the leader of Indonesia emphasized that a key to success was fostering a spirit of healthy competition spirit between the 9 ministries involved, knowing that each ministry had to report progress during weekly coordinating meetings.
And if achieving scale and impact wasn’t enough, speed was also obtained when launching phase 2 of the project. Consider this: it took just 6 months for the Bank’s team to get from activity initiation to Board approval.
SPEED
And speaking of speed, Jakarta-based Mike Osborne, a Senior Procurement Specialist, has made it his mission —along with quality. Mike and his team have taken a risk-based approach to the portfolio they oversee on the procurement side, using data to predict needs and identify projects that require more support based on past performance.
“We know which sectors, which agencies, which countries [in the region] have had issues with implementation, and we have used this data to predict where we think the needs are. This model allows us to identify which projects will require the least preparation time and those who will require a bit more time and more hands-on support,” said Mike.
Mike and his team are also using AI for terms of reference to improve efficiency and reduce delays when hiring consultants. And they rely on new technology for more interactive training and even use a chatbot to allow people to ask questions and interact.
“The Bank has a data set now that we can interrogate and use for a variety of purposes. One is for risk prediction purposes. Another is for generating documents that are used repetitively. We have the technology and the dataset to do this. We’ve shown in the region that this is possible and that it does add a lot of value. And I believe rolling out this type of initiative will have an enormous impact,” said Mike.
And this, to me, is what the Better Bank is all about. Turning regional insights and innovations into faster, bigger, better and smarter client-oriented solutions. While Indonesia stands out due to the sheer scale of our operations in the country and the resources at the government’s disposal, the innovative ideas I saw there can be adapted and replicated elsewhere. Imagine the possibilities as we harness these innovations, not just for one country but for many more.
Join the Conversation