Operational and Administrative Challenges of SMEs in Post-COVID Africa: Insights from Zimbabwe

The data underlying this study consist of the bibliographic dataset and thematic coding matrix derived from 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and institutional reports on SMEs in Africa and Zimbabwe, covering the period 2000–2024. The dataset includes details of each publication, extracted challenge descriptions, practice recommendations, domain classifications (finance, human resources, marketing, operations, risk, and ICT), and temporal categorization (pre-COVID, post-COVID, or both).These data have been organized into a structured matrix (Excel format) and are available as supplementary material with this article. Researchers may use the dataset to replicate the study’s synthesis process or extend the analysis in future comparative work.