This project aims at studying the interactions between magma dynamics and faulting during the propagation of brittle failure in the active East African continental rift system. Despite extensive study of extensional faults, many features of their development remain obscure, among those the preferred direction of fault growth. Together with models for normal fault propagating upward from seismogenic levels, there are models advocating their dominant downward propagation from the surface. Regarding the East African rift tectonic evolution, contradicting scenarios have been proposed, involving either their formation of large fault-bounded tectonic depressions undergoing subsequent segmentation with isolation of individual basins, or the development of isolated basins in the initial stages of rifting followed by their partial linkage. While it has been shown that both subsidence and normal faulting can occur above a subsurface dike, there is a need for an evolutionary model to account for the development of fault and fracture systems above an active magmatic fissure expressed by surface volcanic constructions in many of the rift segments in East Africa.