Africa is gradually breaking apart, a process that will span millions of years. Over time, portions of East Africa are expected to drift away from the rest of the continent, potentially creating a new sea as the two landmasses diverge farther apart.
This massive rift ranks among the planet’s most extensive fissures and spans multiple nations, including Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique.
Geologists describe the structure as a boundary where the African plate is splitting into two subsiding subplates: the smaller Somali plate and the larger Nubian plate. A 2004 study indicates this separation proceeds at a very slow pace, advancing by only a few centimeters each year.
The ongoing division is likely to resemble a long, thin island forming along the Horn of Africa as the separation progresses.
In 2018, a striking crack opened suddenly
On March 18, 2018, residents in a small town in southeastern Kenya witnessed a dramatic event: the ground split, creating a crack several kilometers long and about twenty meters deep. It was an astonishing sight that had not been seen before in the region.
This newly exposed fault line is connected to the East African Rift system and serves as a live demonstration of how fracture processes evolve over time.
Geologist Lucía Pérez Díaz of the Dynamic Fault Research Group at Royal Holloway College noted in a journal that the eastern branch of the Rift Valley, cutting through Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, began showing significant activity when a large crack appeared in southwest Kenya.
Pérez Díaz points out that this fracture is extraordinary because it provides a direct view of the different stages of crustal cracking as they unfold in real time.
The most remarkable phase began about 30 million years ago in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia and has since extended south toward Zimbabwe, at a pace of roughly 2.5 to 5 centimeters per year.
This ongoing process reveals a lithospheric boundary where the solid outer shell of the Earth is being pulled apart, signaling that a new ocean may eventually form as the cracks widen and deepen.
As the rift continues to evolve, the African continent is expected to shrink in the affected area, potentially leaving behind a vast island-like landmass in the Indian Ocean that would comprise parts of Ethiopia and Somalia, including the Horn of Africa region.
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