20 DEC 2018

A large crack, stretching several kilometres, made a sudden appearance earlier this year in south-western Kenya. The tear, which continues to grow, caused part of the Nairobi-Narok highway to collapse.

Initially, the appearance of the crack was linked to tectonic activity along the East African Rift.

But although geologists now think that this feature is most likely an erosional gully, questions remain as to why it has formed in the location that it did and whether its appearance is at all connected to the ongoing East African Rift.

For example, the crack could be the result of the erosion of soft soils infilling an old rift-related fault.


But every now and again something dramatic happens and leads to renewed questions about the African continent splitting in two.




The East African Rift Valley stretches over 3,000 km from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south, splitting the African plate into two unequal parts: the Somali and Nubian plates.


Why does rifting happen?



An example of a place on Earth where this has happened is the South Atlantic ocean, which resulted from the break up of South America and Africa around 138 million years ago – ever noticed how their coastlines match like pieces of the same puzzle?.





Breaking up isn’t easy






A timeline in action





Dramatic events, such as sudden motorway-splitting faults can give continental rifting a sense of urgency. However, rifting is a very slow process that, most of the time, goes about splitting Africa without anybody even noticing.


Lucia Perez Diaz, Postdoctoral Researcher, Fault Dynamics Research Group, Royal Holloway.


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