Africa's Rift Valley

The East African Rift is an active continental rift zone in eastern Africa that appears to be a developing divergent tectonic plate boundary. In the past it was considered to be part of a larger Great Rift Valley that extended north to Turkey. The rift is a narrow zone in which the African Plate is in the process of splitting into two new tectonic plates called the Somali Plate and the Nubian Plate, which are subplates or protoplates.