March 13 (Reuters) - Sudan will hold its first multi-party elections in 24 years in April.
Below are details about the two contenders for the job of president of south Sudan, a region many believe could become Africa's newest nation state in 2011 after a southern referendum on independence.
SALVA KIIR-SUDAN PEOPLE'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT
South Sudan's incumbent president and analysts' favorite to win, got the job in 2005 when charismatic long-time SPLM leader John Garang died in a helicopter crash months after a north-south peace deal was signed in January of that year.
One of the insurgency's main commanders and tacticians, Kiir is primarily seen as a no-nonsense army man, most happy with his men in the bush. In his election campaign he has emphasized his military credentials and that he is the last of the small group of men who founded the southern rebel army in the early 1980s.
He is from a village close to Sudan's north-south border in Warrap State, one of the most under-developed areas of the war-ravaged south. He is from the south's largest Dinka tribe, which critics say dominates southern politics and the army.
Besides maintaining a shaky peace with north Sudan, one of his major achievements was the successful integration into the southern army of a large militia of some 40,000 men, which during the war fought against his forces.
His detractors say he has failed to fulfill promises to end graft, modernize the army or create peace between fractious tribal groups. Northerners call him the "vice absent" rather than the vice president of Sudan.
According to the north-south peace deal, the SPLM is officially supposed to promote unity with north Sudan. But in the past year Kiir has made increasingly separatist statements, giving credence to those who always said he was a secret secessionist.
LAM AKOL-SUDAN PEOPLE'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT - DEMOCRATIC CHANGE
Akol, 59, a prominent member from the Shilluk tribe, was born in a small village in the oil-producing Upper Nile State.
A southern intellectual with a PhD in chemical engineering, he was a lecturer in Khartoum when Sudan's second north-south war broke out in 1983. He also worked recruiting people for the southern insurgency.
In 1991, he and the southern rebel commander Riek Machar who is now the south's vice president, spilt from the southern rebels complaining that its leadership was undemocratic and that there had been an unnecessary loss of life.
The split triggered the most demoralizing period of the war for many southerners in which tens of thousands of people lost their lives in south-south battles.
His armed group controlled parts of Upper Nile State and in 1997 he signed the Fashoda Peace Agreement with Khartoum. However he later returned to the southern rebel SPLM.
He was given a prominent job in the coalition national government formed after the 2005 peace deal. Many in the SPLM complained that as Sudan's foreign minister, he was too closely aligned with the north and he was removed. The SPLM says his SPLM-DC party is funded by Khartoum, which he denies.
Akol is promising an end to corruption in his campaign which has been limited in the south, which his party says is because of harassment by the SPLM-dominated authorities. While many analysts believe he is unlikely to win, his anti-graft stance may attract votes from those fed up with greedy south Sudanese government officials. (Reporting by Skye Wheeler, Editing by Opheera McDoom and Matthew Jones)