Marnie Chesterton

And I told them, hey, hold on.

In fact, there's a research that's suggesting that East Africa may actually be splitting apart.

And, you know, researchers are saying that this is happening faster than scientists once believed.

So the forecast now we had to talk about Turkana region, and this is in the northern Kenya.

It's an area where geologists now think could be one of the weakest points in the Earth's crust.

So that was an interesting conversation.

Okay, so I've had colleagues hike through Turkana to try and find the, I think they're building a geothermal power station up there, yeah?

Yes, yes.

Phyllis, is it part of the Rift Valley?

It is.

So the Turkana region is far northwest part of Kenya.

It is near the border with Uganda and South Sudan and also Ethiopia.

However, as you may know, generally East Africa itself sits on a huge tectonic boundary.

So the ground beneath Eastern Africa is gradually stretching.

It's thinning and it's cracking as two tectonic plates now drift away from each other.

OK, so tectonic plates, these are enormous plates of earth, I guess, on which we all sit and there are the cracks between the plates and the plates are either pushing towards each other or grinding against their neighbour in an unsexy way, which makes earthquakes.

And the big tectonic boundary in Africa is where these two plates are moving apart, right?

Yeah.

Yes, you've described it perfectly.

So essentially the African continent is dividing along two massive tectonic plates.