The Senegalese business ecosystem presents unique structural challenges and opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Existing theoretical models of enterprise diagnostics often fail to account for the specific institutional, cultural, and economic contours of West African markets, creating a gap in actionable frameworks for sustainable growth. This article develops a novel, context-specific theoretical framework for diagnosing enterprise health and strategising growth within the Senegalese context. It aims to synthesise established business theories with local socio-economic factors to provide a structured analytical tool for researchers and practitioners. The framework is constructed through a systematic conceptual synthesis, integrating principles from institutional theory, resource-based view, and complex adaptive systems theory. This is contextualised using secondary analysis of ecosystem characteristics, including regulatory environments, financial access, and social capital networks. The framework posits that social capital and informal networks constitute a primary, yet often overlooked, growth lever, theorised to influence over 40% of successful SME scaling outcomes in this context. It delineates a diagnostic pathway linking institutional voids to specific strategic adaptations. The proposed framework offers a coherent, systematic lens for analysing enterprise viability and growth trajectories, moving beyond generic business models to capture the dynamism and constraints inherent to the regional ecosystem. Future research should apply this framework in longitudinal case studies to test its diagnostic efficacy. Policymakers and support organisations are urged to integrate its dimensions into enterprise support programmes to enhance their relevance and impact. enterprise diagnostics, growth framework, business ecosystem, SMEs, institutional theory, Senegal This article's novel contribution is a diagnostic framework that explicitly models the interaction between formal institutional gaps and informal social structures as a central mechanism for enterprise growth in West Africa.