The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Growth of SMEs and the Innovations Made to Promote their Business Operations on Service Delivery.

Since the onset of the Corona Virus Pandemic (Covid 19) in 2020 the SMEs have been drastically affected in-terms of growth and services delivery. Small to medium enterprises have undergone immense changes in their operations as they adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since end of March 2020, Zimbabwean SMEs are facing a dynamic change in their business operations. These changes caused a great impact on the general performance of SMEs in Zimbabwe, hence this research worked to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the operations of SMEs in Zimbabwe and the innovations that have been made to address the impacts of COVID-19 on their business operations on service delivery. The findings revealed that, amongst the business community it was the SME’s that were mostly affected by the pandemic. The study noted that there are notably more women involved in the SME’s sector than men with ratios of 65% and 35% respectively, which in congruent with Signh et al (2021). The study also revealed that the majority of respondents are aged between 16 and 40 which imply that the SME’s sector is dominated by relatively young people/ In addition, the study revealed that most of the players in this sector hold an academic qualification ranging from secondary school to degree level. The study discovered that government-imposed lockdowns had a significant impact on SME’s operations and growth. The study further highlighted some of the innovations adopted by SMEs to counter the effects of covid-19. A majority of respondents highlighted that they adopted new means of technology to improve the growth of their businesses. In terms of government support, most the respondents highlighted that there was little or government support to help them cope with the effects of the pandemic. Furthermore, most of the respondents did not adopt a door-to-door service delivery with only about 33% using the strategies. The study also showed that a majority of the respondents did not diversify their business ventures with only 40% doing so. Furthermore, various challenges were encountered by the SMEs in their bid to respond to the effects of covid-19. All the respondents highlighted that they had trouble gathering the funds to implement the strategies for countering the effects of covid-19. The majority also highlighted that the cost of production increased as they tried to come up solutions to counter the effects of covid-19.