Pushed to the peripheries of the world's news agenda, the recent African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa still delivered a tectonic shift in the continent's most prominent multilateral body.

Mahmoud Ali Youssouf was elected head of the AU's executive commission to replace the outgoing Moussa Faki from Chad. Youssouf is the first person from the East Africa region to lead the AU Commission, or AUC. Djibouti's foreign minister since 2005, there are few who can match Youssouf's experience.

Still, Youssouf was given an outside chance to win against veteran Kenyan politician Raila Odinga in an election with the mandate that the new leader would come from East Africa,

"The competition was between a politician and a diplomat, and it was very tough. It went to the seventh round of voting," explained DW's Solomon Muchie, who covers the African Union in Addis Ababa.

But Youssouf won the required support of two-thirds of the region's leaders to secure the post and represent some 1.5 billion Africans across the continent. Algeria's ambassador to the AU, Selma Malika Haddadi beat out competition from Egypt and Morocco.

Youssouf, who speaks Arabic, English and French, now faces the unenviable task of serving an African continent that is seeing as much armed conflict as it did in the post-Cold War era of the 1990s.

"If they are united in thought, they might be able to develop a common agenda, but it's a tall order," says Kenyan analyst Macharia Munene, a professor of history and international relations.

"Djibouti is a small but very critical state in this region," Muchie says, pointing out that the United States, China, France, Italy and Japan all have

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