From oil to coffee: A prince’s campaign to rebrand Saudi identity
LA TimesAs diplomatic victories go, it may not seem like much: The United Nations recognized the Khawlani coffee bean as part of the “intangible cultural heritage” of Saudi Arabia. “It always upheld symbols associated with Islam, so Saudis didn’t grow up with national symbols like others did.” National Day, marking the proclamation of Saudi Arabia as a kingdom in 1932, was not an official holiday, and imams would go so far as to issue fatwas against celebrating it, according to Mohammed Alyahya, a Saudi commentator who is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington. Though the U.N. launched its “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” in 2008, Saudi Arabia’s first entries didn’t appear until 2015. The investment in coffee will flow through the newly created state-owned Saudi Coffee Co., whose slogans include “Coffee has a homeland and a story to be told.” With a mandate to raise annual production to 2,500 tons — more than eight times the current total — by 2030, it plans to develop farms in the country’s “coffee belt” region.
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