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African press review 23 October 2013

Madagascar prepares for a presidential poll in which half the country can't vote. SA's crime intelligence boss is suspended. Kenyan journalists fear censorship is in the pipeline. Kenya's Lupita Nyong’o wins high praise in Hollywood. And the AU tells Sudan and South Sudan to stop bickering over Abyei.

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The front page of the Madagascar Tribune is completely devoted to Friday's presidential elections.

There will be 33 candidates in the first round. There are 7,823,305 registered voters, from a population of 22 million. According to Unicef, half the Malgache population is under 18 and therefore disqualified. The rest don't have the necessary identity papers. There will be 5,000 local observers, 800 international ones and teams from the African Union and the Southern African Development Community. The roughly 6,000 observers will have their work cut out to visit every one of the 20,001 polling stations to ensure that all goes well on Friday.

A separate article says that Madagascar's economic problems can only be redressed when the island's political crisis ends. This, according to the Tribune, will encourage the return of foreign investment, reopen the flow of international aid money and get Madagascar back inside the terms of the US African Growth Opportunity Act.

With 92 per cent of the population currently living below the threshold of extreme poverty, Madagascar is the poorest country in the world.

In Johannesburg financial paper BusinessDay reports that South Africa's acting crime intelligence boss Chris Ngcobo has been placed on special leave amid allegations that he exaggerated his qualifications for the job.

When Major General Ngcobo was appointed to the post in June last year - replacing Richard Mdluli, who left facing charges of fraud, corruption and murder - the national police commissioner said Ngcobo would bring much-needed stability to the police intelligence environment.

Yesterday the commissioner said it was "with a huge sense of disappointment" that she had to announce that Ngcobo was being placed on special leave.

She said that discrepancies had been found between the declaration made by Ngcobo and official records of his qualifications, and he had failed to satisfactorily explain the discrepancies.

A criminal investigation has been initiated.

In Kenya the Standard reports that local journalists are worried that two laws currently under discussion at the National Assembly could have a negative impact on Kenya's media.

The Media Council of Kenya Bill and the Kenya Information and Communications Act Amendment Bill are intended to overhaul the media industry as a whole.

The Standard says the media fraternity is fearful that the government will, under proposed changes, control and regulate broadcast content and decide when to switch off TV and radio stations.

The media want a clear distinction between the regulation of the broadcast content undertaken by the Communication Commission of Kenya and the regulation of ethics undertaken by the Media Council of Kenya. They claim that this distinction is dangerously blurred in the proposed legislation.

The top story in sister paper the Daily Nation goes to Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o, who was honoured earlier this week at the 17th Hollywood Film Awards held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, California.

Nyong'o was named best supporting actress for her role in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave.

Introducing Nyong'o, her co -star Angela Bassett said that moviegoers were being offered a “breakthrough performance that they will not soon forget".

Nyong’o has been tipped as one of the top contenders for the Oscar for best supporting actress.

According to the Ugandan Daily Monitor, the African Union has called on the presidents of Sudan and South Sudan to find a solution to the crisis over the disputed Abyei border zone.

The call comes after Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir yesterday visited Juba to meet his South Sudanese counterpart Silva Kiir amid tension between the two countries over a referendum to determine whether Abyei should be part of South Sudan or remain under the control of Khartoum.

The African Union has demanded that the two presidents commit to obligations they made earlier and resolve the long-standing conflict. The AU panel on Sudan, headed by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, wanted the referendum to be held this month. It won't be.

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