Small and medium businesses (SMEs), sometimes known as start-ups, are the engines of every economy. The Corona Virus pandemic has quickly escalated into a global issue that has wreaked havoc on small businesses. As a result of the virus, start-ups are either shutting down or shrinking. This explains why small businesses lack the capital to defend themselves against the financial consequences of the pandemic. Many have extrapolated that the coronavirus pandemic has been more devastating to the financial system than the latest recession of 2008. The present day's chaotic economic environment is the reason startups fail at a higher rate. Then again, start-ups which innovate in difficult periods, including the pandemic, are also at risk of high tiers of fulfilment. To help start-ups stay in enterprise and combat the negative situations, this article identifies the challenges start-ups come upon due to COVID-19, and offers progressive, realistic, and tactical strategies to navigate the risks and uncertainty that come with the pandemic in Africa. Zambia will be used as the primary instance in this paper. This paper is written since, currently, most of the literature on COVID-19 concentrates on healthy topics with restricted publications on start-ups. In addition, there's no literature on how the pandemic has affected countries in Africa, consisting of Zambia. We illustrate how start-ups must mitigate the effects of this crisis through strategic improvements, particularly alliances and partnerships, pivoting, commercial enterprise mapping, and low-putting results. Then we identify the challenges encountered, particularly in finance, human assets, support offerings, and confined supply chains. Lastly, we defined measures that would be adopted by policymakers to assist start-ups facing challenges in surviving the pandemic environment.

Keywords : Start-ups, demanding situations, COVID-19, innovative, Strategic, Zambia.