The East African Rift is a network of valleys that stretches from the Red Sea to Mozambique. Here, we see cultivated fields in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. (Image credit: LuCaAr via Getty Images)
LiveScience has a story about plate tectonics and Africa. A rift in eastern Africa might be tearing it into two pieces. The rift is known as the East African Rift. It stretches for over 2,000 miles and consists of a system of valleys from the Red Sea to Mozambique.
So will Africa rip apart completely, and if so, when will it split? To answer this question, let's look at the region's tectonic plates, the outer parts of the planet's surface that can collide with each other, making mountains, or pull apart, creating vast basins.
Along this colossal tear in eastern Africa, the Somalian tectonic plate is pulling eastward from the larger, older part of the continent, the Nubian tectonic plate, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. (The Somalian plate is also known as the Somali plate, and the Nubian plate is also sometimes called the African plate.)
The Somalian and Nubian plates are also separating from the Arabian plate in the north. These plates intersect in the Afar region of Ethiopia, creating a Y-shaped rift system, the Geological Society of London noted.
