This article analyses and theorises the practice of biographical storytelling of HIV‐positive AIDS activists in South Africa. Combining research in illness narratives, studies of emotions in social activism and analysis of global health institutions in Africa, I explore how biographical self‐narrations are deployed to facilitate access to resources and knowledge and thus acquire material and symbolic value. I illustrate my argument through the analysis of the case of an AIDS activist who became a professional biographical storyteller. Based on the analysis which I claim to represent wider dynamics in human‐rights‐based health activism in the Global South, I propose the concept of narrative economies by which I mean the set of exchange relationships within which biographical self‐narrations circulate and produce social value for individuals and organisations.