Is Africa going to split into two continents?

africa-split

Heavy rains caused havoc in Kenya in March, collapsing hospital walls, flooding entire neighborhoods, and closing off major highways. The downpour also exposed a fault line that geologists now say is evidence that the African continent will split into two over the next tens of millions of years.

The floodwaters created a rift stretching several kilometers near Mai Mahiu town in the Rift Valley, ripping a major highway open and creating a deep gully that sucked in cars and impacted farmers and their homes. Some scientists say seismic tremors and tectonic shifts in the region are to blame. But others say there’s no record of seismic activity, and such cracks can form through “piping,” a geological activity that occurs when heavy rainfalls cause the softer layers underground to buckle under pressure.

The East African Rift System (EARS), part of the Great Rift Valley, stretches thousands of kilometers, starting from the Gulf of Aden in the north to Mozambique in the south. The EARS is an actively developing rift, a process that will slowly thin the earth’s lithosphere crust, spread the seafloor, stretch and break the topography through faulting, and eventually break the continent apart. Once this is done, most of Africa will remain on what is known as the Nubian Plate, while Somalia and parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania will form a new continent on the Somali Plate. Continued at Quartz.com