Geography of Kenya - Geology

Geology

The recent geology of western Kenya is dominated by the volcanism and rift tectonics of the East African Rift. The rift runs north–south from Lake Turkana in the north south past Mount Kenya and Lake Magadi and on to Lake Natron and Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

Much of the western two-thirds of the country underlying the Pliocene–Pleistocene volcanics consist of Precambrian basement rocks. The southeast corner of the country is underlain by sediments of the Karoo System of Permian to Late Triassic age and a strip of Jurassic age sediments along the coast in the Mombasa area. The Anza trough is a NW–SE trending Jurassic rift extending from the Indian Ocean coast to the Sudan northwest of Lake Turkana. The Anza Rift resulted from the break–up of Gondwana.