Ubuntu, Solidarity and the Call to Accompany

Growing up in Africa, I never gave much thought to the language we used for family. It was simply how family was.

My mother’s sisters were not merely my aunts. Depending on where they stood in relation to my mother in the family, they were my big mother or my small mother. In the same way, my father’s brothers were either my big father or small father. That language carried more than a description of birth order. It reflected relationship and belonging.

The same expansive understanding extended throughout the family. Even the word cousin, in the way it is commonly understood elsewhere, can feel somewhat foreign in many African cultures. The lines between immediate and extended family are not always drawn quite so sharply. A child belongs not only to a mother and father, but in a very real sense to a wider family and community.

Long before I knew the language of Catholic Social Teaching, I understood something about what it meant to belong to people — and to understand that other people belonged to me.

There is an African word that captures something of this understanding: Ubuntu.

It is often expressed simply as:

I am because we are.

But Ubuntu is more than a beautiful phrase. It is an understanding of our humanity that recognizes that none of us becomes fully ourselves in isolation. Who I am is shaped by relationship — by family, community, those who came before me and those whose lives intersect with mine.

Our flourishing is interconnected.

And so is our responsibility for one another.

What Does Solidarity Actually Look Like?

Years later, I would encounter in Catholic Social Teaching language for something that felt remarkably familiar.

Solidarity reminds us that we are one human family. It refuses the idea that the suffering, exclusion or lack of opportunity experienced by another person can simply be dismissed as someone else’s problem.

But solidarity must be accompanied by another important principle: subsidiarity.

Because caring about another person does not give us permission to take over their journey.

Subsidiarity recognizes that individuals and communities possess knowledge, gifts, relationships, leadership and the capacity to shape their own futures. Our responsibility is not to unnecessarily replace that capacity, but to support and strengthen it.

Perhaps we can put the relationship between these principles very simply:

Solidarity says: We will walk with you.

Subsidiarity says: We will not presume to walk for you.

Ubuntu reminds us why we walk together in the first place: because our lives are connected.

This distinction matters, particularly when we talk about development.

There can be a temptation, even when our intentions are good, to begin by asking, What can we do for this community?

Perhaps a better question is:

What is this community already doing, what gifts and capacity are already present, and how can we accompany them as those gifts flourish?

That is the difference between simply providing assistance and building capacity.

It is the difference between directing and accompanying.

A Continent That Thrives on Its Own Terms

This understanding is deeply reflected in the mission of Friends of PACTPAN.

Our mission speaks of building capacity where it is needed most — supporting transformative initiatives that empower African communities, uplift talents and foster sustainable development. Our vision imagines “a continent that thrives on its own terms.”

Those words matter.

The goal is not to prescribe from afar what African communities should become. Nor is it to assume that solutions, knowledge or innovation must come from somewhere else.

Across Africa there is already extraordinary talent, faith, creativity, knowledge and leadership.

The question for those of us who accompany this work is how we can help create conditions in which those gifts have greater opportunity to flourish.

At Friends of PACTPAN, we describe ourselves as a collaborative group of donors supporting transformative and community-centered initiatives. The word collaborative is important.

Partnership changes the relationship.

It moves us away from a model in which one person is simply the giver and another the receiver. Instead, each brings something to the table — resources, knowledge, experience, relationships, expertise, faith, creativity or opportunity.

Everyone has something to contribute.

An Economy That Allows Everyone to Participate

This understanding also resonates with the vision Pope Francis offered through the Economy of Francesco.

Pope Francis challenged young economists, entrepreneurs and changemakers to imagine an economy that does not discard people or leave them permanently on its margins, but one in which people can participate and become protagonists of change.

His challenge was not simply about increasing charitable giving. It invited us to think differently about the structures and relationships that determine who gets to participate, whose talents are recognized, whose voices are heard and who has access to opportunity.

Just as importantly, it asks us to consider how close to the people and communities experiencing the need the resources — and the decisions about those resources — should be placed.

That vision brings us back to empowerment.

Education can be empowerment.

Developing skills can be empowerment.

Leadership formation can be empowerment.

Technology can be empowerment.

Creating economic opportunity can be empowerment.

Authoring thought on issues that map out progress in Africa can be empowerment.

Sometimes empowerment begins simply because someone recognizes a gift in another person and helps create the opportunity for that gift to be used.

This is where solidarity and subsidiarity meet.

We accompany because we recognize our shared humanity.

But we accompany in a way that respects the dignity, agency and leadership of those with whom we walk.

We are not looking to direct. We are looking to accompany.

What Does Accompaniment Ask of Us?

For those of us who call ourselves Friends of PACTPAN, perhaps the word friend itself offers us guidance.

A friend does not arrive with all the answers.

A friend listens.

A friend walks alongside.

A friend asks:

Where are you going? What are you building? What do you need? How can I walk with you?

And how each of us answers that last question will be different.

For some, accompaniment may mean financial support.

For another, it may mean sharing professional expertise or mentoring a young person. It may mean opening a door, making a connection, advocating for change, sharing a story, amplifying a voice that needs to be heard, or committing a community and its work to prayer.

There should be different ways of showing up because we possess different gifts and different opportunities to use them.

The important thing is that we show up.

If Silence Was to Speak

PACTPAN’s advocacy work offers a haunting phrase:

“If silence was to speak.”

Perhaps those words present a question to each of us.

If Ubuntu reminds us that we belong to one another, then belonging carries responsibility.

Solidarity calls us into relationship.

Subsidiarity shapes how we enter that relationship — respecting the voice, dignity, gifts and agency of those we accompany.

But ultimately, these principles require something of us.

We do not all have to respond in the same way. We should not.

Yet if we choose not to respond at all, perhaps we must be willing to ask a more uncomfortable question:

If our silence could speak, what would it say about us?

What does our inaction communicate when another person’s dignity is threatened?

What does our silence say when voices are struggling to be heard?

What does it mean to say “I am because we are” if the struggles of the we never ask anything of the I?

Perhaps this is why those childhood words — big mother, small mother, big father, small father, brother, sister — mean more to me today than I understood when I was growing up.

They taught me that belonging is not merely about what we call one another.

Belonging carries responsibility.

If you are mine and I am yours, I cannot simply look away.

For Friends of PACTPAN, solidarity calls us into that relationship. Subsidiarity teaches us how to honor it. We do not seek to direct communities from afar or determine what their future should look like. We seek to accompany, to invest in capacity, to recognize the gifts already present and, where we can, help create the conditions in which those gifts can flourish.

Because ultimately, the goal is not an Africa shaped according to someone else’s vision.

It is, in the words of our own vision:

“A continent that thrives on its own terms.”

And perhaps Ubuntu has been reminding us why that matters all along.

I am because we are.