Namibia should by rights feel little concern about the coronavirus outbreak given that the sparsely-populated desert country is 12,000 kilometres from China and without a single confirmed case. A notice in Chinese and English taped to an aluminium shutter on a Chinese-owned shop in Windhoek’s Chinatown spells it out: Any merchant returning to Namibia from China “must be quarantined for 14 days and keep the shop closed for that period”, state the typed instructions signed by the Chinatown management. Many shop owners who travelled to China for the year-end break have opted to stay put instead of returning to Windhoek’s Chinatown, a vast complex of nearly 200 retail, wholesale, food and electronics outlets in the northern industrial district of the capital.
