In remote villages of the Jazan region on the mountainous Saudi-Yemeni border, coffee has been many things over the centuries: a symbol of hospitality, a means of peacemaking, even a currency. Now, an ambitious new plan by the Saudi government envisions yet another role for this ancestral crop: a national industry aiming to fill your next morning cup.
With the government pitching prosperity for one of the oldest, if unheralded,…