IntroductionPlate tectonics plays an important role in understanding many geological aspects and observations and allows scientists to prevent disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes. The African plate is an interesting plate because it delimits the major plates with many differences. This report will summarize the general layout of the African plate, highlighting in the first part the geological features of greatest interest. This includes the type of plate boundaries and a brief history of the African Plate. While the second part will focus on the East African rift and its widely debated initial and current processes. General tectonic setting of Africa The African plate is bounded by several types of plate boundaries. These plates are a divergent boundary where plates move away from each other in opposite directions and create earthquakes and volcanic activity. The second type is the convergent boundary, in this type the plates move towards each other causing one plate to subduct under the other. And the third type is the transformation boundary. Plates slide past each other and earthquakes are usually associated with this (Smith and Pun 2009). The North American and South American plates bounded from the west the African plate that formed the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The plate boundaries here are mostly divergent with some transform boundaries. The African plate is moving away from the North American plate at 28 mmyr-1 although the rate is decreasing northward and from the South American plate at 30 mmyr-1. While to the east the African plate is divergently bounded by the Arabian and Indian plates and move at an average speed of 20 mm-1. From the north, the Eurasian plate bounded the African plate; here......middle of paper......9-272• Simkin,T., Unger, J., Tilling, R., Vogt, P. and Spall, H. (1994) This dynamic planet : World map of volcanoes, earthquakes, impact craters and plate tectonics. US Geological Survey, Mapping Distribution• Smith, G and Pun, A. (2009) How does the Earth work? : physical geology and the process of science. Prentice Hall pp640• Reilinger, R., McClusky, S., Vernant, P., Laurence, S., Ergintav, S., Cakmak, R., Ozener, H., Kadirov, F., Guliev, I., Stepanyan , R., Nadariya, M., Hahubia, G., Mahmoud, S., ArRajehi, A., Abdulaziz, K., Paradissis, D., Al-Aydrus, A., Prilepin, M., Guseva, T. , Evren, E., Dmitrotsa, A., Filikov, S.V., Gomez, F., Al-Ghazzi, R. and Karam, G.. (2006) GPS constraints on continental deformation in the Africa-Arabia-Eurasia continental collision zone and implications for the dynamics of plate interactions. Journal of Geophysical Research 111 (B5)