Water Scarcity and Rioting: DisaggregatedEvidence from Sub-Saharan Africa∗May 9, 2017AbstractIt is often purported that unusually dry weather conditions provoke small-scalesocial conflict - riots - by intensifying the competition for water. The present paperexplores this hypothesis, using data from Sub-Saharan Africa. We rely on monthlydata at the cell level (0.5×0.5 degrees), an approach that is tailored to the short-lived and local nature of the phenomenon. Using a drought index to proxy forweather shocks, we find that a one-standard-deviation fall in the index (signalingdrier conditions) raises the likelihood of riots in a given cell and month by 8.3%. Wefurther observe that the effect of unusually dry weather conditions is substantiallylarger in cells with a lower availability of water resources (such as rivers and lakes),a finding that supports the significance of the competition-for-water mechanism