The authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are clamping down on media and communications as vote counting continues following Sunday’s crucial presidential elections to see who will succeed incumbent President Joseph Kabila.

Government officials on Wednesday withdrew the press accreditation of a French radio journalist Florence Morice from Radio France Internationale (RFI), the East African reported.

Morice was accused of “violating electoral law and the code of good conduct for foreign journalists covering the elections”.

Government spokesperson Lambert Mende, confirming that RFI’s broadcasts had been cut off in all of Congo’s cities, said that Kinshasa would not “let a radio station throw petrol on the flames at a time when we are waiting for the compilation of the provisional results".

RFI which has a very large audience in the DRC, a French-speaking country of about 80 million people, has been following the elections closely.