Business sustainability has always been at risk when confronted with pandemics. Therefore, from a business sustainability perspective, lockdown, as a Government of Uganda (GoU)’s measure to contain the spread of the Corona Virus and Disease (COVID-19), hit hard the Ugandan economy. Specifically, countrywide closure of universities automatically led to the closure of over 50,000 university roadside businesses of women, men and youth entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs’ daily livelihoods were dependent on over 300,000 university students and university operations. That is, hostels, restaurants, secretarial (photocopying and printing) bureaus, groceries and food vendors, saloons, stationery, and bookshops, among others, were all closed, thus causing market disruptions in incomes, employment, and supply chains. Resultantly, the Uganda COVID-19 e-conference of 3rd–4th May 2020, dubbed, “COVID-19 and The Economy: Inclusive Economic Stimulus Strategies, Opportunities, and Linkages” ( https://berlin.mofa.go.ug/data-dnews-178-uganda-holds-e-conference-on-inclusive-economic-stimulus-strategies,-opportunities-and-linkages.html ) revealed that roadside businesses/entrepreneurs seem to extremely have been hit, yet how to help them, remains unknown. Hence, this research project was funded by Government of Uganda (GoU) through Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (RIF), with a main objective of gathering baseline information which will be used: ‘To create a fully integrated local strategy for promoting sustainable university roadside businesses and enterprises amidst the COVID-19 pandemic’ or guard against other related pandemic effect on business. The practical implication of this research work is that it can be used to protect entrepreneurs against other pandemics which can affect this business sustainability. The key Findings indicated that with regards to ‘survival,’ over 41.3% of respondents (45% women, 85% youths) are ‘unable to tell the expected recovery time needed for their businesses.’ That is, most university roadside entrepreneurs could not tell when they will ever recover from the business shocks that COVID-19 imposed on them. In terms of impact on ‘Output,’ results indicate that the main impact of COVID-19 on university roadside entrepreneurs was ‘Reduction in orders’ and ‘Increased difficulty in financing.’ This was mainly faced by saloon, restaurants, stationery, and secretarial service businesses. While a combination of these two impacts on output affected 45% of the studies business (n = 72), ‘Disruption in Logistics’ and the inability to deliver existing orders were key impacts as well. Hence, a combination of these four impacts on output affected over 73% of the studied roadside businesses. With respect to ‘employment,’ a total of 153 entrepreneurs directly provides jobs to over 616 people (mainly youths, and some few elderly men and women) before COVID-19 pandemic, and over 300,000 jobs indirectly. However, only 74 businesses (like restaurants serving bypasses) could remain slightly active during the COVID-19 pandemic. Slightly active means by the time of collecting this data, there was slight ease in the lockdown, though universities were still closed. Hence, 74 enterprises could only provide 197 jobs. This means the COVID-19 pandemic created a decrease in jobs created by roadside entrepreneurs by over 60%.