Angola's post-conflict economy is characterised by significant institutional voids, yet a dynamic entrepreneurial sector persists. The interplay between these structural constraints and individual agency remains underexplored, particularly through qualitative lenses that capture lived experience. This study aims to elucidate how entrepreneurs perceive, interpret, and navigate institutional voids, and to theorise the mechanisms of agency they employ to build and sustain ventures within this challenging context. A longitudinal, multi-case qualitative design was employed. Data were collected via 42 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with founders and senior managers of small and medium-sized enterprises, supplemented by ethnographic observation and document analysis. Data were analysed using a reflexive thematic approach. Analysis identified a core theme of 'negotiated embeddedness', where entrepreneurs strategically engage with informal networks to compensate for formal institutional deficiencies. A prominent finding was that over 70% of participants described creating parallel, private infrastructure for core functions like security and logistics as a critical, yet costly, survival strategy. Entrepreneurial agency in Angola is not merely reactive to voids but involves proactive, nuanced strategies of negotiation and substitution. This agency, however, is often channeled into building private alternatives rather than reforming public institutions, which may entrench a dualistic economic system. Policymakers should focus on co-designing formal institutions with entrepreneurial stakeholders to enhance legitimacy and reduce reliance on costly private workarounds. Investors and support organisations should develop frameworks that recognise and leverage 'negotiated embeddedness' as a core business competency. institutional voids, entrepreneurial agency, qualitative research, business environment, negotiated embeddedness, Angola This paper provides a novel, empirically grounded theorisation of 'negotiated embeddedness' as a central mechanism for venture operation in weak institutional settings, moving beyond binary depictions of constraint versus innovation.