Vandana Chandra is a senior economist in the World Bank’s Africa Finance and Private Sector, and DEC Operations and Strategy Departments. Most of her work has focused on economic and export diversification, innovation and technological adaptation, catch up, competitiveness and growth. These areas emphasize industry- and country-specific policy analysis. Presently, she is a member of a study team working on African Competitiveness in Simple, Light Manufactured Products. This Study explores why Africa cannot manufacture competitively more of the simple products that it does produce, and why it cannot start manufacturing some of the simple goods that it presently only imports although it has a latent comparative advantage in them. Vietnam is used as the comparator and China the benchmark country for evaluating Africa’s competitiveness. She is editor of Technology, Adaptation and Exports: How Some Developing Countries Did It (2006); and co-editor of Innovation and Growth: Chasing a Moving Frontier, (2009). Her most recent co-authored research paper is “Korea and the BICs (Brazil, India and China): Catching Up Experiences,”(2009).