Peter Draper has extensive experience as a policy and regulatory analyst with a focus on trade and investment policies in Southern African and emerging markets. He is the founder of Tutwa Consulting Group where he was the managing director from 2015 to 2018. He is currently a director.

Draper is currently the executive director of the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the European Centre for International Political Economy, based in Brussels. He is a former senior research fellow in the Economic Diplomacy Programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs and is a part-time lecturer at Wits Business School where he won two teaching awards.

He was formerly head of Economic Analysis and Research in the Trade Policy Division at the Department of Trade and Industry in South Africa. He was also the head of the Economics Department at the University of KwaZulu Natal (then University of Durban-Westville). He holds a Master of Commerce degree from the University of Natal (now University of KwaZulu-Natal).