Africa is slowly pulling apart, a process that will unfold over countless millennia. As continents drift, the eastern portion is expected to separate from the rest, potentially creating a new sea that could carve its own path between two rising landmasses.
This enormous crack system ranks among the planet’s most expansive, stretching across nations including Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique.
The active fault line illustrates a fundamental split of the African Plate into two subplates: the smaller Somali Plate and the larger Nubian Plate. A 2004 study noted that their separation proceeds at a remarkably slow pace, measured in mere centimeters each year.
The consequence of this division will most likely resemble a vast, elongated island edging away from the mainland as the Horn of Africa emerges more distinctly from the rest of the continent.
In 2018, a dramatic crack appeared
On March 18, 2018, residents of a small town in southeastern Kenya witnessed a startling event. The ground beneath them opened into a deep, multi-kilometer fissure that extended for meters across and tens of meters deep. It was a sight that the locals had never imagined possible.
This fracture is linked to the ongoing East African Rift system and serves as a vivid indicator of how the region has evolved over time.
Geologist Lucía Pérez Díaz of the Dynamic Fault Research Group described in a journal that the eastern branch of the Rift Valley, running through Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, activated when a major crack opened suddenly in southwest Kenya.
According to Pérez Díaz, this kind of cracking is a rare, live demonstration of the different stages of fracture as they unfold in real time.
The most significant rupture began roughly 30 million years ago in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia and has since propagated southward to Zimbabwe, averaging about 2.5 to 5 centimeters per year.
Today, in the Afar region, the Earth’s lithosphere—the tough outer shell—has been pressed toward a breaking point, a state that foreshadows major geological change.
Pérez Díaz notes that as the crust continues to split, new oceanic waters will begin to form in the widening gaps. Over tens of millions of years, the seabed could migrate along the entire length of the fracture, gradually reshaping the map.
As this process advances, the African continent is expected to shrink in area, while a large island-like landmass may emerge, comprising portions of Ethiopia and Somalia, including a more isolated Horn of Africa.
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Updates will be issued by the environmental authorities as the field observations continue and new data are collected to track the pace and pattern of this unfolding rift.