East African Rift System

Splitting apart Africa: The East African Rift System or Great Rift Valley is one of the best examples of a divergent plate boundary on land in the popular tectonic plate model. It extends almost 6000 km southward from the Afar triple junction between northern Ethiopia and the Arabian Peninsula through eastern to southern Africa, effectively splitting Africa into two separate plates. This results in thin crust with a high flow of heat from the Earth’s interior as well as a series of deep elongated…

Plate tectonics rifting