With support from ActionAid, the women have organised themselves into a community-based organisation and invested in a small scale peanut butter making business.

Josephine Maseko has been working with the women for two months

She is taking charge of the peanut butter making when members of the CBO group supported by ActionAid are out working in the field, especially during the rainy season.

According to Maseko, after harvesting season, up to 40kg of peanuts is processed into butter daily, selling at Z$400 000 per kilogram.

Herself not a member of the CBO but an ‘employee’, the 31-year-old, who is living positively with HIV, says she gets 20% of the proceeds.

“It’s not enough but at least I have something to do,” says Maseko, adding she also supplement this income knitting jerseys for children.

She says the while the business has improved her life and that of members of the group, with more support it can still grow.

Maseko found out in 2005 that she was living with HIV after she had become ill and her husband had died. She was put on anti-retroviral treatment a year later.