By: Kurniawan Arif Maspul

In the hush that falls just before sunset in Riyadh, Jakarta or Dubai, there is a moment of collective suspension. The air is thick with anticipation. Then the call to prayer unfurls, dates are lifted, water is sipped, and almost instinctively, coffee follows. In that simple act — the pouring of Arabic gahwa or the clink of iced kopi susu — lies an economic story far larger than caffeine.

Ramadan’s night-time coffee economy has become a revealing lens on strategic development, soft power and resilience across the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Coffee is no minor indulgence in these regions. UNESCO has inscribed Arabic coffee on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, describing it as a symbol of generosity and dialogue. That symbolism now intersects with hard numbers. The Middle East coffee-beans market is valued at roughly US$2.2 billion and rising, fuelled by youthful demographics and a booming speciality café culture. In the UAE alone, coffee sales exceed AED 12 billion — about US$3.2 billion — with an extraordinary 93 per cent consumed outside the home. Saudi Arabia pours an estimated 36 million cups a day, sustaining more than 61,000 cafés and a branded coffee-shop sector worth around US$1.38 billion in 2024, up more than 11 per cent in a single year.

Indonesia, meanwhile, stands at the other end of the supply chain and yet increasingly at its centre. The world’s fourth-largest producer and fifth-largest consumer of coffee exported US$1.63 billion worth of beans in 2024 and shipped more than 200,000 tonnes globally in the first half of 2025 alone. Domestic consumption has climbed from 4.45 million to 4.8 million bags in just five years. What was once dismissed locally as an ‘old people’s drink’ has become an emblem of urban modernity. The result is a strategic corridor stretching from the highlands of Sumatra and Sulawesi to the neon-lit cafés of the Gulf.

Ramadan intensifies this corridor. The month reprograms economic time. Daylight commerce slows; nighttime consumption surges. Saudi marketplaces teem until dawn. Cafés extend trading hours to 3 am, hiring additional staff, absorbing higher electricity costs and generating concentrated bursts of revenue. While some studies have noted short-term GDP dips during Ramadan — one estimate put the UAE’s pre-pandemic Ramadan contraction at around US$1.4 billion — Gulf economists argue that such metrics miss the point. The month’s economic pulse shifts rather than disappears. Expenditure moves into food and beverage, into shared experiences, into what urban planners now call the ‘night-time economy’.

For oil-dependent states pursuing diversification under strategies such as Saudi Vision 2030, this nocturnal vitality is not incidental. It is structural. Coffee shops have become micro-engines of non-oil growth, social cohesion and even labour-market flexibility. Extended hours generate VAT receipts and service-sector employment. They also cultivate what might be described as social capital — the intangible glue of trust and belonging that underpins political stability.

In Ramadan, cafés function as modern majlis: spaces where business is discussed, grievances softened, and generational divides bridged over small porcelain cups.

This is not merely sociological poetry. It is geopolitics by other means. Analysts at the USC Centre on Public Diplomacy have described coffeehouses as unconventional yet strategic venues of soft power. Indonesia has embraced this logic overtly, deploying ‘coffee diplomacy’ during state visits and at multilateral forums to showcase regional blends as symbols of cultural diversity. Gulf states, too, leverage coffee ritual as a narrative. A cup of gahwa offered to a visiting dignitary signals continuity between Bedouin hospitality and hyper-modern skylines.

Trade flows reinforce this symbolism. Egypt has emerged among Indonesia’s top coffee destinations. Gulf importers, wary of climate volatility in Brazil and Vietnam, are diversifying towards Southeast Asian suppliers. Dubai’s ports handled around AED 3.5 billion (nearly US$1 billion) in green coffee trade in 2024, consolidating the emirate’s role as a re-export hub. These exchanges deepen South–South ties at a time when the global trading system feels brittle.

Yet the aroma of opportunity is tinged with anxiety. Climate change looms over the bean belt. The World Bank has warned that rising temperatures and erratic rainfall threaten vast swathes of Arabica-growing regions. Around 125 million livelihoods globally depend on coffee. In Indonesia, 98 per cent of farms are smaller than two hectares, acutely vulnerable to shifting weather patterns and pests such as coffee rust. Sustainability is no longer a boutique concern; it is a strategic necessity.

Regulatory currents amplify the pressure. The European Union’s deforestation regulations are reshaping expectations of traceability and environmental compliance. The Global Coffee Platform reports that certified sustainable coffee now accounts for roughly 21 per cent of global exports among participating members, and the share is climbing. Saudi Arabia has launched its own Coffee Sustainability Initiative, embedding traceability and eco-friendly standards into domestic policy. Climate adaptation programmes in Indonesia, including partnerships backed by USAID and private firms, aim to equip smallholders with shade-tree systems, improved irrigation and resilient varieties.

In this context, Ramadan’s coffee economy offers a microcosm of the broader transition. The surge in demand during fasting nights underscores both interdependence and fragility. Supply chains must flex across time zones and hemispheres. Ports, logistics firms and roasters coordinate around lunar calendars as much as market signals. The cup cradled after tarawih prayers is the endpoint of a chain that begins on a hillside vulnerable to climate stress.

There is, in this choreography, a subtle lesson for strategic policy. Economic diversification cannot be abstract. It must be anchored in lived culture. The success of Gulf coffee sectors lies partly in their ability to fuse heritage — UNESCO-listed rituals of hospitality — with hyper-modern retail ecosystems and global sourcing. Indonesia’s ascent reflects a similar fusion: smallholder traditions intersecting with urban start-ups and digital payment platforms.

For middle powers navigating an unsettled century, the lesson extends far beyond any single region. Coffee is no longer a peripheral commodity drifting quietly through global trade statistics. It has become a living artery of influence, binding Latin America to East Asia, Africa to the Gulf, and Europe to Southeast Asia. What looks like a simple supply chain is, in truth, a network of shared vulnerability and shared possibility.

Across continents, coffee sustains the livelihoods of roughly 120 million people. It anchors export revenues in producing nations and fuels vast consumer markets in cities that rarely see a coffee tree. It connects smallholder farmers on two-hectare plots to urban professionals in glass towers. It is traded in billions of dollars, regulated under tightening environmental standards, and scrutinised under new deforestation and traceability regimes. A bean grown in one hemisphere now carries the climate anxieties, labour politics and sustainability expectations of another.

In this sense, coffee has become a quiet instrument of geopolitical relevance. Commodity chains once dismissed as mundane are emerging as platforms of influence. Whoever shapes the standards shapes the market. Whoever finances climate adaptation secures a long-term supply. Whoever tells the story of origin and sustainability builds soft power. Development banks, multinational corporations and regional blocs are no longer bystanders; they are architects of the future of the cup.

There is something deeply human in this. Coffee houses have always been spaces of exchange — of ideas, of grievances, of ambition. Today, that exchange stretches across oceans. Muslim-majority societies share ritual and trade through coffee, but so too do communities divided by language, ideology or geography. From highland farms to cosmopolitan cafés, the chain weaves culture into commerce and development into daily habit.

In a fragmented world tempted by economic nationalism and strategic suspicion, such connective tissue matters profoundly. Climate shocks in one producing country reverberate through prices and politics elsewhere. Regulatory shifts in one bloc reshape farming practices across continents. Stability in rural regions abroad becomes inseparable from consumer confidence at home. Interdependence is no longer theoretical; it is brewed fresh each morning.

The deeper truth is this: power in the twenty-first century will not rest solely on military strength or technological supremacy. It will also rest on stewardship — of supply chains, of standards, of sustainability, of trust. Coffee offers a glimpse of that alternative grammar of power. It demonstrates that resilience can be cultivated, that influence can be infused through partnership rather than pressure.

A single cup, lifted at dawn or shared at dusk, carries more than aroma. It carries the labour of distant hands, the risk of changing climates, the weight of regulation and the promise of cooperation. In that humble ritual lies a quiet proposition for the global order: prosperity, like coffee, is strongest when grown together, traded fairly and shared across borders.

As the final sips are taken before dawn and cities quieten again, the economic ledger of Ramadan will show more than receipts. It will record an annual rehearsal of adaptation: of how societies bend time, commerce and ritual to coexist. In that rehearsal lies a model of strategic resilience. The steam rising from a small cup in the early hours carries with it more than aroma.

It carries the possibility that tradition, when aligned with innovation and sustainability, can anchor a region’s future — and quietly reshape the geopolitics of a global commodity.