Abstract
Institutional voids significantly shape the entrepreneurial landscape in developing countries. In Africa, they particularly exacerbate social challenges. While they present major challenges to business activities, they also encourage innovation. Thus, challenging institutional environments provide opportunities for social entrepreneurs to address pressing social issues. Despite the potential role they could play in driving social change, the intersection of institutional voids and social entrepreneurship remains under-researched. Knowledge about personal stories taking place in non-Western contexts and in the specific sector of higher education is very limited. This study seeks to fill this literature gap by exploring how social entrepreneurs evolving in institutionally-constrained environments navigate institutional voids, overtake social issues and enhance higher education. By adopting an exploratory qualitative approach rooted in an ethnographic single-case study, this research employs multiple methods to provide valuable insights into the lived experiences, challenges and strategies of social entrepreneurs contributing to higher education in Uganda.