Rwanda will hold presidential elections on August 25 followed by parliamentary elections on September 29, the first such polls since the 1994 genocide in the central African country, the electoral commission announced announced.

The polling dates were announced after Rwandans voted overwhemingly in a referendum last month to approve a draft constitution that sets out the legal basis for elections by lifting a suspension on political party activity.

There are currently three candidates in the running for the country's head of state, including exiled former prime minister Faustin Twagiramungu.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame is widely expected to be named as the candidate for his Rwandan Patriotic Front party, during a congress tomorrow.

Campaigning will begin 35 days before the vote and end 48 hours before the polling day.

The president is elected for seven years, and may stand for re-election once.

The two other candidates who have declared they will stand for president are: former minister Jean Nepomuscene Nayinzira and a doctor from the central town of Gitarama, Theoneste Niyitegeka, a political unknown.

The last presidential election in Rwanda, a landlocked country of more than eight million people, most of whom live on less than a dollar a day, was held in 1988, when the sole candidate won more than 99% of the vote.

In 1994, more than a million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in a government-orchestrated bloodbath in about 100 days.

In a bid to prevent another massacre, a new electoral law adopted last week states that political parties are barred from "identifying themselves with a race, ethnic group, clan, region, sex, religion or any other element which could serve as the basis for discrimination". - Sapa-AFP.