By Sénamé Agbossou

Watching the social unrest unfold across France over recent years (from the yellow vest protests to the farmers’ roadblocks, culminating in movements like Bloquons tout), I find myself asking: Is this truly just a political crisis, or are we witnessing something deeper? Something that cuts to the heart of how we understand community, belonging, and shared purpose?

As someone who carries both Togolese and French nationality, with decades of professional experience spanning Europe and Africa, I see France’s current struggles through a unique lens. It’s the lens of Ubuntu; the African philosophy that reminds us “I am because we are,” and through my work with Obuntuo, I’ve dedicated myself to making this principle operational in teams, institutions, and civic life.

What I see in France today isn’t just a failure of politics. It’s a failure of relationship. And Ubuntu has much to teach us about what’s missing, and how to find our way back.

What Ubuntu Reveals About France’s Disconnect

When we apply Ubuntu’s wisdom to France’s current crisis, six critical gaps become crystal clear:

1. The Dignity Deficit

Ubuntu begins with a fundamental truth: every person’s worth matters; especially those who oppose us. But look at France’s current political temperature. The lead-up to Bloquons tout has already produced deeply degrading symbols like pig heads dumped near places of worship bearing the president’s name. This isn’t just bad politics; it’s a corrosion of the very foundation that makes democratic conversation possible.

Here’s what Ubuntu knows that we seem to have forgotten: dignity lost upstream becomes disorder downstream. When we stop seeing our opponents as fellow humans deserving of respect, we poison the well of collective problem-solving before we even begin.

2. The Interdependence Illusion

In a hung Assembly, mathematical reality is clear: no single side can govern alone. Legitimacy must be co-created, not seized. Yet our political culture continues to operate as if one camp could “win” completely and the others simply vanish into irrelevance.

The revolving door of governments and the parade of fresh Prime Minister resignations tells the story of what happens when we deny interdependence rather than design for it. Ubuntu reminds us that sustainable power is shared power, not because it’s morally nice, but because it actually works.

3. The Participation Vacuum

Policies don’t exist in boardrooms; they land on real lives. Farmers feeling the pinch of new regulations. Nurses stretched thin in understaffed hospitals. Students facing uncertain futures. Small business owners navigating impossible bureaucracy.

When the people who carry the true cost of policy feel unheard in its creation, they organize their own megaphone. The farmers’ roadblocks of 2024-25 weren’t really about diesel taxes; they were a demand to be co-authors of their own story, not merely objects of someone else’s policy experiments.

4. The Reciprocity Gap

Ubuntu teaches us that budgets are social covenants, not just spreadsheets. When austerity measures are presented without visible protections, without clear evidence of shared sacrifice, citizens read it as punishment, not partnership.

This explains the cross-spectrum anger energizing movements like Bloquons tout. People aren’t just asking, “What are you taking from us?” They’re asking, “What are you protecting while you ask us to contribute more?” When they can’t see reciprocity, revolt becomes inevitable.

5. The Repair That Never Came

After the Nahel tragedy and the 2023 riots, France debated order. Ubuntu would have paired that debate with something equally urgent: visible repair. Processes that actively mend trust between institutions and the neighborhoods they serve.

Without that restorative thread, without deliberate efforts to heal rather than just control, old wounds keep supplying fuel for new fires. The cycle continues because we treat symptoms while ignoring the underlying fractures.

6. Accountability Without Care

Truth matters. Timelines matter. Metrics matter. But when accountability becomes a weapon rather than a tool for collective learning, it backfires spectacularly.

France’s repeated use of Article 49.3, constitutional shortcuts deployed as routine tactics, sends a clear message: “We don’t need you.” Even when such actions are technically legal, they erode the legitimacy that makes governance possible in the first place.

The Five Fault Lines Running Through French Society

These Ubuntu insights reveal five deeper patterns, cultural habits that transcend left-right politics and explain why even our victories feel hollow:

1. Combat Politics Over Bridge-Building

We’ve become addicted to fighting to humiliate rather than working to build. Every political interaction becomes a zero-sum battle where someone must be crushed for someone else to succeed.

2. Process Over Purpose

We’ve elevated mastery of rules above the harder work of earning genuine consent. Technical correctness has replaced the more demanding, but more sustainable, work of bringing people along.

3. Numbers Over Narratives

Technocracy speaks in statistics; people respond to stories. When governance becomes purely analytical, citizens feel spoken over rather than spoken with.

4. The Creator-Recipient Gap

Those who shape solutions rarely bear their consequences, while those who bear consequences rarely get to shape solutions. This fundamental disconnect breeds resentment and resistance.

5. Fear-Based Communication

We’ve traded in polls and anxiety rather than mutual care and shared vision-making. Our public discourse runs on what we’re against, not what we’re building toward together.

These aren’t partisan problems, they’re relational problems. And they explain why even policy victories feel like defeats.

Remembering Who We Can Be

But here’s what gives me hope: we haven’t lost our capacity for something better. We just proved it.

Remember Paris 2024. Despite deep political divisions, France delivered one of the most graceful, creative, and widely praised Olympic Games in recent memory. More sustainable than previous Games. More inclusive. More genuinely connected to the city and its people.

For a few luminous weeks, we practiced high-trust collaboration at scale. We showed the world, and ourselves, what becomes possible when we operate from our highest potential rather than our deepest fears.

That wasn’t luck. That was France remembering how to be France.

The Human Potential Meter: Diagnosing Our Zones

Through my work with Obuntuo, I use what I call the Human Potential Meter to understand how groups behave under pressure. There are three zones:

The Contribution Zone — Purpose, unity, and excellence align. Energy flows toward creation and positive impact. This is where France operated during the Olympics.

The Drift Zone — Goodwill exists, but direction is unclear. People want to contribute but aren’t sure how. Energy dissipates rather than compounds.

The Friction Zone — Energy burns in conflict and misalignment. People work harder but accomplish less. This is where France finds itself trapped today.

The good news? We’ve proven we can operate in the Contribution Zone. The question is whether we’ll choose to make the switch, out of Friction, back into Contribution, before the cost of division becomes irreversible.

The Path Forward: Relational Intelligence

This moment is asking for more than programmatic fixes or policy adjustments. It’s asking for what Ubuntu calls relational intelligence: our capacity to create legitimacy together.

That means:

• Treating opponents as future partners rather than permanent enemies
• Approaching budgets as social covenants that reflect our shared values and commitments
• Rebuilding dignity as infrastructure rather than treating it as optional sentiment
• Creating space for the voices of those who will live with the consequences of our decisions
• Designing processes for repair rather than just punishment when things go wrong

The beautiful truth is that we already have these tools. The culture exists. The social intelligence that choreographed a nation-wide festival of contribution during the Olympics can absolutely guide us through conflict and toward collaboration.

The Choice Before Us

France doesn’t lack a plan. France lacks a “we.”

And “we” begins the moment we choose to protect the dignity of those we haven’t yet convinced. It starts when we recognize that the people blocking roads aren’t enemies of progress, they’re neighbors asking to be included in writing the story of their own lives.

The Ubuntu path forward isn’t naive optimism. It’s practical wisdom that recognizes a fundamental truth: sustainable solutions require sustainable relationships. And sustainable relationships require us to see each other not as obstacles to overcome, but as partners in the messy, beautiful work of building a society that works for everyone.

We’ve done it before. We just did it, on the world’s stage, in 2024. The same capacity that brought us Olympic glory can guide us through this crisis toward something even more valuable: a democracy that truly embodies the promise that we are because we are together.

The tools are here. The culture is here. The only question is whether we’ll choose to use them.