Importance and relevance follows from having created value.

A wistful plaint from African Countries Are Failing to Make a Dent in Washington’s Diplomatic Scene by Nahal Toosi .  The subheading is It’s partly a question of resources, but it’s also about political will and hustle.

African diplomats say they’d like to be more prominent in the U.S. capital, but that, above all, they lack the resources.

Many of their embassies have just a handful of diplomats. Those diplomats often are underpaid; some take side jobs in Washington such as Uber or delivery drivers, or even at gas stations, according to a current and a former State Department official familiar with the issue.

The argument is that African embassies in Washington, DC are ineffective at their job and multiple reasons are advanced for this ineffectiveness.

They don't have the resources to perform their jobs.

They don't have enough people to do their jobs.

Many embassies do not have people who know how to do their job.

Ambassadors and their staffs are not involved in diplomatic activities.

Many embassies do not have public affairs officers.

The countries of Africa do not share common diplomatic goals.

Some of the countries are in the diplomatic doghouse (recent coups, human rights abuses, civil repression, etc. )

Some ambassadors like to keep a low profile.

Many embassies limit themselves by an excessive observation of protocol.

African diplomats are not good at networking.

Africa does not have strong trade or military ties to the US which makes it harder for diplomats to function.

Often, the African country does not intend to use its embassy personnel in the first place.

Some African countries prefer to contract with lobbyists to accomplish embassy functions.

African countries lack relevance to American commercial and global interests.  

African countries aren't being invited to important meetings.

Sometimes the American State department engages directly with the foreign country rather than going through the embassy.

It is a long indictment.  And it is boringly predictable.  

This is exactly what you get from teams within corporations and enterprises from poor performing levels of management.  

We don't have enough resources.

We don't have enough people.

We don't have the right people.

We don't get enough leadership support.

We don't have enough time.

There is too much uncertainty.

Virtually every poor performing team or executive or executive group advances some combination or variation as the explanation for why they have not achieved what they needed to achieve.

Which is not to say that all these things, and more barriers, might all be true to an extent.  But if everything were easy and available, they would not be needed as leaders.  They are just underperforming managers.  Leaders figure out the work-arounds, the trade-offs, the alternative approaches.  And they get things done.  

Are there African or other small country embassies which punch well above their class?  Sure.  It can be done and it is done.

Interestingly, the author of the article fails to directly allude to two separate long-standing issues.  

Disintermediation - All ambassadors and embassies everywhere have suffered this problem for the past forty years.  When you have instantaneous secure communication (text, voice, and video) as we have had for that period of time, the need for embassies is much more superfluous than used to be the case when messaging was a process of days and weeks.  This is an issue affecting everyone, not just African embassies.

Parking lot sclerosis - Again, all embassies everywhere have suffered from their nation using the staffing of the embassy as a place to park political opponents (to get them out of the domestic limelight), stuff with nepotistic or political favor appointees, or slip in spies (spies against the host nation or, not infrequently, spies against emigre groups in the host nation.)  Once all those slots are filled, there is often little room left for professional foreign service diplomats.

African nations might suffer these to a greater degree than other nations but all suffer from those conditions.  US ambassadors overseas are routinely circumvented and left out of the loop, just are African ambassadors in Washington, DC.

Toosi's solution is not wrong, but kind of irrelevant.

That could mean some entrepreneurial African diplomats need to start cold-calling a few Washington socialites about getting on their invite lists, persuading think-tankers to share their Rolodexes or building a tradition of hosting gatherings at their embassies.

If there’s anything in shortage in Washington, it’s attention, a former Asian diplomat said.

“You have to get out and get that attention,” he said. “It takes hustle.”

Hustle takes care of almost all problems.  The devil is always in the details.  If African embassies and ambassadors want to be relevant, they need to provide value to their own country and to their host nation.  If they are not doing that (whatever that might entail), then of course they are not going to get the attention they crave.  Kind of a middle-school status seeking game and insight.