THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE PLATES
The plate spacing between Arabia and Africa at Ardoukoba increases by a few centimetres at most each year.
It is here that the most spectacular manifestation of the continental drift can be seen. Every year, Arabia and part of the Horn of Africa move away from the African continent by a few centimetres at most... but by 1.20 m in one go when the Ardoukoba is born. This causes the African continent to slowly rise towards Europe, threatening the Mediterranean with extinction. Scientists predict that in a few million years, an ocean as large as the Atlantic will have formed. The earth's crust here is very thin and magma is pushing it. It is its action that accentuates the separation of the two plates, acting in three different directions:
the axis of the Red Sea between Arabia and Africa, which starts in Djibouti and goes up to Syria.
the Gulf of Aden axis, which runs along the coast of northern Somalia and separates Somalia and Yemen.
the longest, best-known and most spectacular axis (because it is terrestrial and punctuated by numerous active volcanoes), that of the famous African rift ("fissure", "split" in English), which runs from Mozambique to Lake Abbe. You are here at the junction of these three fracture axes. And the Afar Depression, a triangular land between Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia, is ultimately the only point of attachment between the Arabian and African plates. In this area, the earth's crust is stretched and therefore particularly thin (5 km), and its movements are permanent. Earthquakes are therefore very frequent here (15 to 20 per day) but, fortunately, very rarely noticeable.