Africa is splitting into two – Should we panic?

 

Geologists say that Africa is progressively splitting in two, a process that will eventually take entire nations away from the continent and result in the birth of a new ocean. The slow separation of the continent is linked to a 35-mile-long crack that formed in Ethiopia’s desert after an earthquake in 2005, and will eventually become a completely new sea. The world witnessed dramatic evidence of this back in March 2018, when an enormous crack opened in the ground in southwestern Kenya. The tear, which appeared suddenly after heavy rains, measured several kilometres in length and swallowed a section of the Nairobi-Narok highway.

The Nubian African Plate, the Somalian African Plate, andthe Arabian Plate are separating at varying rates. The Arabian Plate is separating from Africa at a rate of around an inch per year, while the two African plates are separating at a rate of half an inch to 0.2 inch per year. This geological process will inevitably divide the continent, resulting in currently landlocked countries such as Uganda and Zambia gaining their own coastlines in due time, which would take five to ten million years. For the time being, the most visible evidence is a 35-mile-long fracture in the Ethiopian desert.

The new coastlines may open up new chances for economicexpansion. Countries such as Uganda and Zambia will benefit from additional trade ports, fishing grounds, and subsea internet infrastructure. However, many people may have to be evacuated and this could mean a temporary loss of livelihood for many.

There's no need to panic. It’s easy to forget that the earth beneath our feet is constantly moving – that the continents we stand on are little more than thin tectonic plates floating and jostling atop a churning sphere of hot rock. The phenomena of rifting can be traced back at least 138 million years, when South America and Africa were separated into different continents.

What the heck – apparently even the Indian tectonic plate isbreaking into two - beneath Tibet!