Rift Valley Lake Plates Along

'Something happened here. The flesh of the continent split ….' Laurence Breiner.

East Africa's Great Rift Valley is a 5,000 kilometre long fissure in the Earth's Crust running from the Red Sea in the north to Mozambique in the south. As it runs south, this crack or 'rift' varies in width from 30 to 90 kilometres and from a few hundred to a few thousand metres deep - often running far below sea level. The rocks underneath the rift valley are over 5.3 million years old.

The Great Rift Valley was formed over twenty million years ago by the slow separation of East Africa's giant tectonic plates. As the plates pulled apart, lava was forced up into the space and caused the Earth's surface along the rift to bulge, forming a large snaking highland area punctuated with volcanoes including mount Kilimanjaro and Ngorongoro.

Above ground, thick forests covered the continent from coast to coast but, as the highland crusts or 'domes' grew - forced up by molten lava below - they began to disrupt rainfall patterns to the east. The forests here then began to fragment, and patches of open country developed, producing a mosaic of environments, from forests to woodland to shrub and grassland.

As the two plates continued to pull apart and seismic activity along the crack intensified, a long line of this elevated crust collapsed, leaving a deep scar, the Great Rift Valley, tracing down through the continent's right flank. When it reaches Southern Ethiopia, the scar splits in two to rejoin again below Lake Malawi. The Western Rift cuts deep through Kenya and Tanzania and contains some of the deepest lakes in the world including Lake Tanganyika (1,470 meters) as well as Lake Natron, Lake Eyasi and Lake Manyara, close to the Olduvai Gorge archaeological site.

As old as the hills this rift may be, but it is still very much on the move. The many active and semi-active volcanoes and numerous hot springs that lie along the valley are proof of the continued plate movements and subterranean activity below and softly, softly, the Rift continues to widen.

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Formation of the Rift Valley