Africa is home to over 1000 different tribes and rich cultures with practices that are both amazing as well as scary, while others are just plain bizarre. Luckily, the advent of formal education has helped in no small way to curb the increase of this bizarre and dangerous practices.

Below is a list of Africa’s most bizarre cultural practices. CAUTION: some of the pictures are gory in nature. viewers discretion is advised.
1. Female genital mutilation/female circumcision
[img]https://top10africa.files./2015/07/b6aa9-fgm.jpg?w=300[/img]

This is the practice of cutting all or part of the external Instruments of a female. This practice occurs at various age in different cultures with some occurring during early childhood while others occurring during puberty or after the female starts having her menses while other cultures practice in during delivery of the first child of the victim. Notable countries that still practice female circumcision include Somalia (98%) Guinea (97%) Egypt (91%) Sierra Leone (90%) Mali (89%) Sudan (88%) Eritrea (83%) Gambia (76%) Burkina Faso (76%) Ethiopia (74%) Mauritania (69%) Liberia (66%) Guinea-Bissau (50%) etc

2. Puberty rites

Puberty rites otherwise called the rite of passage of a boy into manhood, or a girl into womanhood is an integral part of some African cultures and often a period of terror and suffering for the youth. Among the Kuria tribe of Kenya and the Dipo tribe of Ghana,this involves female circumcision while the boys are sometimes circumcised and put through a host of events including starvation and whipping in admission to adulthood.

3. Lip stretching

The mursi , tirma and Chai tribes of Ethiopia are perhaps the last of the African tribes to adorned their lower lips with large lips plate. This they do gradually but first they knock out their front teeth and increasingly increase the size of the lip plate.

4. Kidnapping the bride

To this women, love isn’t an option. Rwanda, Somalia ,Ethiopia and Kenya are countries with tribes who practice this bizarre custom. In the sudaneses tribe of Latuka, when a man wants to marry a lady , he kidnaps her and later informs the parents. If they agree, the kidnaper groom is flogged before he’s allowed to marry her but if they refuse he may forcefully marry her anyway.

5. Killing of deformed children

In some parts of Benin and Ghana deformed children are seen as ‘evil spirits’ and so the community only deems it fit to kill the evil child and purify the mother with the blood of the infant. This practice has been fought hard by the Ghanian government and has reduced significantly in recent years.

6. Tribal marks and scarification:
[img]https://masharikiradio.files./2013/05/afro-tat3.jpg[/img]
Worthy of mention in this ancient art of tribal scarification are the Yoruba tribe of Nigeria,the Neur tribe of south Sudan and the karrayyu people of Ethiopia.

Cc; Mynd44, lalaclasticala

1 and 3 though...

Nah to just contract lalasticlala and Seun to help kidnap rokiatu and any Nairalander whey dey form stubborn and marry

decatalyst:
Nah to just contract lalasticlala and Seun to help kidnap rokiatu and any Nairalander whey dey form stubborn and marry