The United States Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 5.4 Earthquake at a depth of 10 km, on the coast of Tanzania, roughly 200 km to the south of Dar es Salaam, slightly after 8.10 pm local time (slightly after 5.10 pm GMT) on Tuesday 20 January 2026. There are no reports of any damage or casualties associated with this event, although it is likely to have been felt locally.
The western Tanzania lies within the the of the Great Rift Valley, which is slowly splitting the African Plate in two along a line from the Red Sea through Ethiopia, and which includes the great lakes and volcanoes of east-central Africa. This has the potential to open into a new ocean over the next few tens of millions of years, splitting Africa into two new, smaller, continents; Nubia to the west and Somalia to the east.
To the southeast, the island of Madagascar has been moving away from Africa since the Jurassic, forming a series of spreading centres across the Mozambique Channel, which both continue to push the island to the east and exert pressure on the southeastern coast of Africa, contributing to Earthquake activity in the region.
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