Dr. Petina Gappah is the Principal Legal Advisor in the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretriat. A Zimbabwean national who was born in Zambia, she has law degrees from the Universities of Zimbabwe, Graz and Cambridge, where she was a Livingstone Scholar. One of the pioneer lawyers at the Advisory Centre on WTO Law in Geneva for more than a decade, she was the advisor to more than 70 African, Asian, Caribbean and Latin American governments on all aspects of trade law and policy. Before that, she worked for three years as a legal officer in the Appellate Body Secretariat of the World Trade Organization. Petina was one of the founding faculty of Trapca, the Trade Policy Centre for Africa and served on its Advisory Academic Board.

From 2017-2019, Petina worked as a special advisor on trade policy and investment law in the Office of the President and Cabinet of the Government of Zimbabwe. She has been nominated by the Kingdom of Lesotho to serve on the Experts List for disputes arising from the SACU-MERCUSUR free trade agreement and is currently serving as a panellist in a WTO dispute.