Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>West African immigrant entrepreneurs face significant navigation challenges in secondary urban contexts, yet existing literature has predominantly focused on major metropolitan hubs, leaving a critical geographic and theoretical gap in understanding how these entrepreneurs navigate complex institutional environments in secondary cities. This qualitative case study investigates how West African immigrant entrepreneurs navigate the business environment in Wa Metropolitan, Ghana, a secondary city with significant cross-border trade connections, with the main objective of exploring their strategic responses to institutional, economic, and social constraints through the lens of mixed embeddedness theory. Using the mixed embeddedness framework and semi-structured interviews with 32 entrepreneurs and five institutional key informants, data were collected and analyzed using NVivo 15 and thematic analysis.. It resulted in four strategic responses to institutional constraints namely developing supplier credit systems to overcome banking exclusion; using collective registration to bypass restrictive investment regulations; adapting culturally and innovating in customer relations and supply chains for market integration; and leveraging formalized transnational networks for cross-border trade and exclusive sourcing. Further, the findings revealed that these entrepreneurs actively reshape their institutional environment, moving beyond survival to embed their enterprises within the local socio-economic fabric. The research extends mixed embeddedness theory by illustrating how navigation strategies emerge in contexts where national policies, local enforcement, and traditional systems unpredictably intersect, offering practical insights for policymakers and institutions seeking to enhance the institutional environment for immigrant entrepreneurship in secondary West African cities.</p>