Background
Dileita was born in 1958 in the coastal eastern city of Tadjoura, Djibouti, to an Afar family.
Dileita was born in 1958 in the coastal eastern city of Tadjoura, Djibouti, to an Afar family.
He studied in Cairo and Reims, then went to the Centre for Vocational Education in Médéa, Algeria, from which he graduated in 1981.
He has also served as President of the Union for the Presidential Majority (Universiti Malaysia Pahang), the governing coalition. In June 2014, Dileita was appointed as the African Union"s Special Envoy for Libya. Upon graduation, Dileita returned to Djibouti, where he worked under the Presidency of the Republic at the Directorate-General of Protocol.
He became the second ranking diplomat at the embassy of Djibouti in France in early 1990, and subsequently he became Ambassador to Ethiopia in 1997.
He became Ambassador to Uganda in mid-2000. After long-time Prime Minister Barkat Gourad Hamadou resigned for health reasons in February 2001, President Ismail Omar Guelleh appointed Dileita as Prime Minister on March 4, 2001, and he took office on March 7.
He had no prior experience as a minister. Dileita was elected as the Vice-President of the RPP on July 3, 2003, succeeding Hamadou in that post.
Dileita led the ruling coalition, the Union for the Presidential Majority (Universiti Malaysia Pahang), in the January 2003 parliamentary election, standing as the first candidate on the coalition"s list for the District of Djibouti.
On May 21, 2005, Dileita was reappointed as Prime Minister after Guelleh"s re-election in the April 2005 presidential election. A new government under Dileita was named on May 22. As of 2008, Dileita is the President of the Universiti Malaysia Pahang coalition, and he headed the Universiti Malaysia Pahang list for the District of Djibouti in the February 2008 parliamentary election.
Guelleh promptly reappointed him on March 26 and named a new government under Dileita on March 27.
Guelleh retained Dileita in his post even though various other long-serving ministers were dropped from the new government that was announced on 12 May. He was replaced as RPP Vice-President by Abdoulkader Kamil Mohamed in September 2012, as part of an extensive shake-up of the RPP leadership.
On 31 March 2013, Dileita was succeeded by Kamil as Prime Minister. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, announced on 11 June 2014 that Dileita was appointed as the African Union"s Special Envoy for Libya.
He was head of the African Union observer mission for the March 2016 Congolese presidential election.
He was Vice-President of the People"s Rally for Progress (RPP), the governing political party, until 2012.