In addition to instantiating the regular Gtk::Main instance in your main() function, you should also initialize the hildonmm and hildon-fmmm libraries, and the libosso environment which they use. For instance:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  Gtk::Main kit(argc, argv);

  osso_context_t* osso_context = osso_initialize("example", "0.0.1", TRUE /* deprecated parameter */, 0 /* Use default Glib main loop context */);
  if(!osso_context)
  {
    std::cerr << "osso_initialize() failed." << std::endl;
    return OSSO_ERROR;
  }

  Hildon::init();
  Hildon::fm_init();

  ...
}