‘On the scale of human life, not many changes will be seen. You will feel earthquakes, you will see volcanoes erupting, but you will not see the ocean invade our lives.’
The separation is due to the East African Rift System, which is a 2,000-mile rift that formed at least 22 million years ago, where the continent’s Great Lakes reside.
This region is also home to two tectonic plates, the Somali and Nubian, which are actively moving away from each other.
The Earth’s lithosphere, made up of the crust and the upper part of the mantle, is divided into several tectonic plates. But the mechanisms behind the movements have not yet been discovered.
Some researchers speculate that the mechanism is slow circular movements of partially molten rock caused by heat rising from the Earth’s core.
Anyway, plate movement is what is happening in the East African Rift system.
“There are landslides and faults creating seismic activity, along with visible signs of active volcanoes,” Macdonald said.
«In recent years, the main advances have been discovering exactly where the branches of this rupture system go.
The separation is due to the East African Rift System, which is a 2,000-mile rift that formed at least 22 million years ago, where the continent’s Great Lakes reside. A chasm also appeared in Kenya in 2018.

Scientists have long predicted that Africa will split in two, forming a new continent with Somalia and half of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania.
“The northern part was known reasonably well, going through Djibouti and Kenya, but from there to the south, people really had very little idea.”
Recent studies have used sensors such as satellite gravity data and seismic scans to understand what is happening underground.
Alexandra Doten, former NASA and Space Force consultant, explained on her Instagram channel Astro Alexandra: “East Africa is located on the Somalia plate.
‘The line along the border is the African Great Lakes. These are some of the largest lakes on Earth. This represents 25 percent of all unfrozen surface freshwater on the planet, and already contains about 10 percent of all fish species on Earth.
‘The lakes formed because East Africa is separating from the rest of the continent. That Somali plate continues to move even further east, creating a giant valley right here. Keep going.

Researchers previously believed the “split” would take tens of millions of years, but Macdonald said the new ocean and continent would likely appear within one to five million years.
“Over time, East Africa will become your new continent, separated from the rest of Africa by a new ocean.”
Researchers previously believed the “split” would take tens of millions of years, but Macdonald says the split could occur within one to five million years.
A study published in Frontiers in Earth Science in 2024 highlighted how different parts of the East African Rift system show different levels of rift-related volcanic activity.
‘The cratons of Uganda, Tanzania, eastern and southern Congo and Kaapvaal exhibit shallow high-density anomalies underlain by low-density anomalies apparently originating from deeper mantle depths, indicative of lithosphere thinning, with some degree of fusion at the base. ‘, the researchers wrote.
Cracks also appeared in Kenya in 2018 after heavy rain, and some locals reported feeling the ground shake at the time.
Researchers have suggested that these “cracks” will continue to form as the two plates separate, and Madagascar will also split into two separate islands.
In a 2020 study by Virginia Tech, researchers suggested that new oceans would form first in the northern part of the Rift.
D. Sarah Stamps, a professor in the Department of Geosciences, said: “The rate of extension is faster in the north, so we will see new oceans forming there first.”
“Most previous studies suggested that extension is localized in narrow zones around microplates that move independently of the surrounding larger tectonic plates.”