Did You Know? The Great Rift Valley: A Geological Wonder

Home to the East African Rift System, also called Afro-Arabian Rift Valley, is one of the most extensive rifts on earth’s surface, extending from Jordan in southwestern Asia southward through eastern Africa to Mozambique.  It has been forming for some 30 million years (as Africa and the Arabian Peninsula separated)

The system is some 4,000 miles (6,400 km) long and averages 30–40 miles (48–64 km) wide.  It consists of two branches. The main branch, the Eastern Rift Valley (often called the Great Rift Valley, or Rift Valley), extends along the entire length of the system. In the north the rift is occupied by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and the Gulf of Aqaba. It continues southward along the Red Sea and into the Ethiopian Denakil Plain to Lakes Turkana, Naivasha, and Magadi in Kenya. The rift is less obvious through Tanzania, because the eastern rim is much eroded, but it continues southward through the Shire River valley and Mozambique Plain to the coast of the Indian Ocean near Beira, Mozambique. The western branch of the system, the Western Rift Valley, extends northward from the northern end of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) in a great arc that includes Lakes Rukwa, Tanganyika, Kivu, Edward, and Albert. Most of the lakes in the rift system are deep and fjordlike, some with their floors well below sea level. The rift has also been accompanied by extensive volcanism along parts of its length, producing such massifs as Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya.

(source: Britannica)