INTERVIEW: Simba Omutti Birthday Music Festival 2025 promises music, community sports, and a greener Uganda

As Uganda prepares for one of its most exciting end-of-year celebrations, the Simba Omutti Birthday Music Festival 2025 is set to merge entertainment, environmental action, and community empowerment in a single vibrant event. Scheduled for December 20th, 2025 at Millennium Park Lugogo, the festival will feature the launch of the EBTDI tree-planting initiative, live performances from top artists, and the unveiling of a national EBTDI football tournament. Ahead of this highly anticipated gathering, we interviewed Dr. Dennis Daniel Ssemugyenyi, the EBTDI Pioneer, to discuss the vision, activities, and impact of the festival. Below is a detailed Q&A offering insights into what the public can expect.

What is the Simba Mutti Birthday Music Festival 2025 all about?

The Simba Omuti Birthday Music Festival is an event where we have invited various performing artists from Uganda to join us in amplifying the EBTDI message. EBTDI is short for Every Birthday Three-Day Initiative. Uganda loses tens of thousands of hectares of forests annually due to various human activities such as charcoal burning, timber harvesting, agricultural expansion and urbanization.

This has reduced tree cover, dried wetlands and worsened climate instability. The EBTDI solves this, encourages planting of trees equal to one’s age and helps rapidly increase tree cover nationwide.

And we have organized annual birthday planting events. This event at Millennium Park Lugogo in Kampala will help to put our message to the public. It creates a predictable, scalable and continuous supply of new forests and also encourages participation from families, churches, schools and villages, thereby accelerating reforestation beyond government capacity.

So it also helps to solve the issue of soil erosion and degradation. And we have a problem such as hillsides in Kabale, Rwenzori, Bududa and Mbale, among other districts. And now you realize that in these areas they are heavily eroded.

There’s loss of vegetation that causes fertile soils, poor crop yields, and exposes communities to landslides. How does the EPTDI solve this? Planting deep-rooted indigenous trees stabilizes the soil.

And we also encourage community planting on slopes and riverbanks that restores degraded land. Then we have school and community birthday forests help reverse long-term erosion. Then also solves the issue of flooding and deadly mudslides. So this project does a lot for the environment.

What inspired you to start the Every Birthday Three-Day Initiative? 

Well, looking at the various environmental challenges that our Uganda faces, the issues that our country faces, in terms of climate change, among other issues, are quite numerous.

But you see that trees planted, for example, upstream, reduce water runoff and slow flooding. And I have actually won a global recognition award for this project. It is one way we can restore forests, areas where they have been depleted, and also save the environment. So my passion is derived from the various environmental challenges that our country faces.

When and where will the event take place?

The festival will be held on December 20th, 2025, at Millennium Park, Lugogo.

Who is the main figure associated with this year’s celebration?

Well, it’s not one individual. We actually have various performing artists. Dr Jose Chameleone will be there. We have Winnie Nwagi, we have Spice Diana, we have Cindy Sanyu, and various other celebrities will be joining us for this event.

But mainly we are looking at amplifying the EBTDI and making sure that it can become national. We want it to be scaled out towards the country. It’s a visionary environmental, social, and cultural blueprint built around one profound idea that is transforming birthdays into occasions for planting trees equal to one’s age, thereby merging celebration with climate action, personal growth with ecological legacy, and joy with responsibility. I have written a book, the EBTDI, Platting a Legacy, the EBTDI Guide. And across its chapters, the book blends science with storytelling, civic duty, and spiritual reflection to show how a simple birthday ritual can evolve into a global movement and how it can help restore landscapes while uniting communities.

And it also creates a new meaning of birthdays to turn personal milestones into planetary restoration. My book begins by reframing birthdays as more than any of the activities, and they become opportunities to heal the earth.

What are the key activities planned for the day?

There will be, of course, fun and music, and we will also be giving out 200 scholarships to various winners. Those who purchase my book will enter the draw to win a scholarship.  And we’ll be giving out 100 to 200 scholarships, depending on the time. If time allows, we can do more. But at the same time, we’ll be launching the EBTDI National Football Trophy.

Are the scholarships limited to certain schools and education levels, or…?

No, no, no. The scholarships are spread out from lower levels of education, kindergarten or primary through secondary up to university. It doesn’t matter which level or which region.

How does someone buy the book?

A book is available at our offices, and we’ll be making distributions, supplying copies to different petrol stations and bookshops. Anyone who buys a book will get a free ticket and also a chance to win a scholarship. Online also, we’ll be giving out a link. Anyone can buy a book, order a book and be able to access it at just $15, about $50,000.

What is unique about the EBTDI football tournament being launched at this festival?

So, the EBTDI National Gala on this day will be a historic moment. So it will be the official launch of the EBTDI project as a whole, but also the launch of the EBTDI National Football Tournament Trophy.

We’ll be unveiling the trophy that day. So the event becomes more than a celebration. It becomes a fusion of environment, stewardship, sports excellence, youth mobilization, entertainment, and national unity.

And why sports, and why now? The marriage becomes a perfect marriage – environment plus sports. Sports brings what tree planting needs. Excitement, visibility, mass participation, community spirit, and unshakeable joy.

Tree planting brings what sports needs. Purpose, responsibility, culture, identity and national transformation. So by joining the two, EBTDI creates something new, a lifestyle movement where environmental duty meets entertainment, talent discovery, and competition.

And what this synergy achieves is mass youth engagement. Sports mobilizes millions effortlessly and then creates a sustainability culture. Every match, every team, and every training session promotes tree planting and also gives us visibility and media appeal.

Football plus climate action becomes a powerful national narrative and also creates community cohesion. People from different tribes, regions and religions unite for the play and planting. Then also, a healthy sports group promotes physical wellness.

Tree planting promotes environmental wellness. So it also creates intergenerational participation. Parents, schools, youth, and elders all join the movement, and this is how the EBTDI evolves from a tree-planting initiative into a national lifestyle brand that celebrates life, nature, talent and community.

So the concept is about month versus month competition, sports, and teams built by birth months. The EBTDI introduces a unique and exciting tournament concept. Teams are formed by people born in the same month.

January-borns versus February-borns and March-borns versus April-borns. All the way to December. This accomplishes several things. It builds national identity and pride. People already celebrate birthdays together.

Now they compete together. It creates a new form of unity. Tribes divide people. Political parties divide people. Religion divides people. But birth months cut across all divisions. The January-born team may include Baganda, Banyankore, Acholi, Bagisu, Basoga, and so on and so forth.

So it may include Muslims, Catholics, born-agains, Christians, youth, and adults. This is pure unity. This is national cohesion in its clearest form. It encourages mass inclusion.

What are the entry fees for attendees?

A: The fees are as follows: Ordinary: 20,000 UGX, VIP: 50,000 UGX, VVIP: 100,000 UGX, and a table for six: 1,000,000 UGX

Who is organising the event?

A: The event is organized by Abtex Promotions, together with partners associated with the EBTDI initiative. We’ve done our due diligence and think that he was the one available at the moment, and given his experience in the field, we found it easy to work with him and also mobilize other artists.

What audience is this event intended for?

Youth especially, but being an environmental project, discards across all ages. We want the corporate fraternity to join us. We are looking at different NGOs, looking at government agencies, NEMA, the National Forest Authority, and other corporate entities. We want them to adopt the EBTDI as part of their CSR so that when a CEO is celebrating a birthday, they will plant trees equal to their age and become EBTDI champions. Other people can emulate what they see their CEOs doing. This can go a long way to promoting environmental sustainability and also amplifying the message, putting it out there. So we are looking at all ages and youth.

How can individuals or companies participate beyond attending?

People can participate by making contributions towards the cause.  People can buy our books. And we also want this to become a family tradition in every home. When a parent is celebrating a birthday for their child, they should plant trees equal to the child’s age. It really does a lot of things and helps us reinforce Uganda.

And we encourage kingdoms and royal leaders to also emulate the same. They can also permit their subjects to plant trees on kingdom land. We want to encourage churches and leaders to take on the cause so that people can emulate them. We want people to offer land, scholarships and anything that can add value to environmental preservation.

What impact do organizers expect this event to have?

A: The event aims to raise environmental awareness, mobilize communities into tree planting, create an annual sports tradition, and provide a platform for musicians to engage in social causes. We want to see a greener Uganda. We want to see fewer floods and more forests. We want to see different tree species that have been cut down revived. We want clean air. We want to create food security. Trees have food values. We want to plant as many trees as possible.