Mineral Resources Potential - Geothermal Resources

Map of East Africa showing some of the historically
active volcanoes (the trianglss) and the Afar Triangle
(shaded, center) -a triple junction where three plates
are pulling away from one another: the Arabian Plate,
and the ?wo PG3ftS ofthe African Plate (the Nubian and
the Somalian) splitting along the East African Rifi
Zone (USGS).
The Ethiopian Rift is thi: northernmost extension of the
great East Afrim Rift that extends from Nortb-Eastem Ethiopia to
Mozambique in Southern Africa, with a length of more than 4,000
krn. More than onequarter of the rift system lies in Ethiopia (Fig.
1). The central Main Ethiopian Rift (MER) is a large 1 km deep
graben with an average width of about 70-80 km and e length of
700 krn stretching from the Ethiopian-Kenyan border in the south
to the Afar Depression in the north (Dipaola, 1972). The riR
dissects the highlands of the country into the eastern (Harar) and
western (central Ethiopia) Plateaus and is bounded on two sides by