Data sources problem
The World Bank runs Enterprise Surveys that 'provide the world's most comprehensive company-level data in emerging markets and developing economies. Business data are available on 130,000 firms in 135 countries'. You can get access by requesting on the site subject to some confidentiality terms.

The data are fairly comprehensive and would give you a good starting point to form hypotheses as which areas (access to credit, regulation, corruption, etc) matter most that you could then try to test by mining news or social media.

The World Bank also collects data on Doing Business that, while not specific to small companies, highlight country-specific challenges. 

Plenty of research has been published around the two programs above.