The Northwest Indian Ocean and the passive continental margins of East Africa and West Madagascar formed during the breakup of Gondwana in the Mid-Jurassic. It was during this time that the marginal sedimentary basins, currently attracting attention for hydrocarbon exploration, were formed. Since initial rifting, the development of the Indian Ocean has been punctuated by a number of boundary relocations. As a result of this complicated history, it has proven difficult to reconcile the area into a coherent tectonic model. A new high-resolution plate kinematic model of the opening of the NW Indian Ocean has been developed using finite rotation poles generated by a mixture of visual fitting and iterative joint inversion of magnetic isochron and fracture zone data [2,3]. The model is correlated with the tectono-stratigraphy and subsidence history of the sedimentary basins. It will also be used to predict and then quantify the regional stress field of the African plate at important tectonic stages.