The rains have only aggravated the situation by washing away the ash, eventually exposing the cracks. 
 
 Forces of the Earth are the strongest at the base of the valley, yet it is also here that geological processes are most active. 
 
 Somalia and half of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania are expected to split from Africa to form a new continent. 
 
 By JAMES KAHONGEH 
 
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 Kenya is slowly splitting at the Rift Valley, geologists have said after massive Earth movements on Monday morning left deep fissures in Narok County. 
 
 At the intersection of the damage with the busy Maai Mahiu-Narok road, what was recently an even plain of fertile, arable land has been reduced to a rugged expanse, with a huge tear that is as much as 50 feet deep and more than 20 metres wide running through it. 
 
 This spot, however, is just one of the tens, perhaps hundreds, of other weak spots on the Great Rift Valley, which runs through the continent from the Horn of Africa to Mozambique, scientists say. 
 
 NEW CONTINENT 
 
 Four countries in the Horn of Africa — Somalia and half of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania — are expected to split from Africa to form a new continent — referred to as the Somali Plate — in about 50 million years. 
 
 Forces of the Earth are the strongest at the base of the valley, yet it is also here that geological processes are most active. 
 
 Suswa lies at the bottom of the valley. 
 
 “The valley has a history of tectonic and volcanic activities,” says geologist David Adede. 
 
 “Whereas the rift has remained tectonically inactive in the recent past, there could be movements deep within the Earth’s crust that have resulted in zones of weakness extending all the way to the surface.” 
 
 These zones of weakness form fault lines and fissures which are normally filled by volcanic ash, most likely from the nearby Mt Longonot. 
 
 RAINS 
 
 The rains have only aggravated the situation by washing away the ash, eventually exposing the cracks. 
 
 Plate tectonics, or shifting of the Earth’s masses, is based on the argument that Earth’s outer shell is divided into several plates that glide over the mantle, the rocky inner layer above the core. 
 
 The Earth has nine major plates — the North American, Pacific, Eurasian, African, Indo-Australian, Australian, Indian, South American and Antarctic — named after the landforms on them. 
 
 Because of the problem deep within the Earth’s crust at Suswa, Mr Munene says, ongoing repair works by Kenya National Highways Authority, which include filling the gullies with concrete and rocks, will only provide a temporary solution. 
 
 GEOLOGICAL PROCESS 
 
 “You cannot stop a geological process because it occurs from deep within the crust of the Earth,” he says. 
 
 More studies, therefore, need to be conducted in the area to understand the geology of the area and map the fault lines. 
 
 Geological investigations are normally mandatory for any major infrastructural projects such as roads, bridges and even high-rise buildings in danger zones, and Monday we could not establish the safety of the new railway line cutting through this valley in the wake of recent events. 
 
 Families living near the fissure started moving out yesterday, with 72-year-old Mary Wambui saying “staying here is like courting death”. 
 
 She was having dinner with the rest of the family on Monday when the Earth suddenly cracked beneath their feet, cutting their home into two. ||||| CLOSE Experts say Africa will be split into two different continents in the future. Amassive crack appeared in the East African Rift Valley of Kenya. Buzz60 
 
 Vehicles drive next to a deep chasm on a repaired road that had been washed away during a heavy downpour at Maai-Mahiu, around 33.5 miles southwest of capital of Nairobi on March 15, 2018. (Photo: Tony Karumba, AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 It'll take tens of millions of years, but Africa may eventually split into two parts. 
 
 While geologists have known about this possibility for a while, it became news recently when a large crack, stretching several miles in length, made a sudden appearance in southwestern Kenya following heavy rain. 
 
 The tear, which continues to grow, collapsed part of a highway and "was accompanied by seismic activity in the area," said Lucia Perez Diaz, a postdoctoral researcher on tectonics at Royal Holloway, a university in London. 
 
 The crack is located in a region known as the East African Rift Valley. It measures more than 50 feet in depth and 65 feet across, according to National Geographic. A rift valley refers to a lowland region where tectonic plates rift, or move apart. 
 
 A crack that opened up in Kenya’s Rift Valley, damaging a section of the Narok-Nairobi highway, is still growing... pic.twitter.com/T5YocDauYj — BBC (@BBC) March 26, 2018 
 
 The valley stretches over 1,800 miles from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south, splitting the African plate into two unequal parts: the smaller Somali plate and much larger Nubian plate, Perez Diaz noted. 
 
 Eventually the rift should expand and break Africa into two continents: The smaller continent will include present-day Somalia and parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, while the bigger one will include everything else. 
 
 "A rift like this once eventually separated the African and South American continents to form the Atlantic Ocean, and the rift in east Africa may be the very early stages of this," said Christy Till, an Arizona State University geologist. "The process just occurs very slowly and takes millions of years." 
 
 In the U.S., the southwest is sliced by the Rio Grande Rift Valley, which stretches from Chihuahua, Mexico, to Colorado, according to National Geographic. Its formation, roughly 30 million years ago, is responsible for the Rio Grande River bordering the southern U.S. 
 
 “Dramatic events, such as sudden motorway-splitting faults or large catastrophic earthquakes may give continental rifting a sense of urgency but, most of the time, it goes about splitting Africa without anybody even noticing,” Perez Diaz said. 
 
 So this will happen in the next 50M yrs. Can't wait pic.twitter.com/g2uogxK9or — K!M 🇰🇪™ (@Nel_kimz) March 20, 2018 
 
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– Some 250 million years ago, Earth had one continent—Pangaea. Today, there are seven, and in another 50 million years or so, there could be eight. That's according to geologists studying a massive crack that recently appeared in southwestern Kenya, taking out homes and a section of highway, after seismic activity and heavy rain in the area. Located within the appropriately named East African Rift Valley, where two tectonic plates pull away from each other, the crack is several miles long, up to 65 feet across, more than 50 feet deep, and still growing, reports National Geographic. As Christy Till of Arizona State University explains, per USA Today, "a rift like this once eventually separated the African and South American continents to form the Atlantic Ocean and the rift in east Africa may be the very early stages of this." If that is the case, the breakup of the African continent is still tens of millions of years away. "The process just occurs very slowly," Till says. Still, geologists have an idea of how it might happen. With one tectonic plate moving to the west, and the other to the east, researchers predict a portion of east Africa—including Somalia and parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania—will eventually break apart to float between Madagascar and the larger African continent. (USA Today has a diagram.) While the region's residents don't need to worry about the breakup itself, the rift does present plenty of infrastructure issues, per Daily Nation, though portions of it have reportedly been filled with concrete and rocks. A geologist tells Daily Nation the crack was probably there a while, but filled with volcanic ash that rain only recently washed away.