In short
Vatam is a founder-led SEO, AEO, GEO and content marketing agency based in Kigali, Rwanda. We help East African businesses get found in Google and recommended by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, with honest reporting and no ranking guarantees.
Why does Vatam exist?
Because search stopped being ten blue links. People now ask Google, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity a question and get an answer, often with a short list of businesses to trust. If you are not in that answer, you are not in the running.
Most of the playbooks for this were written for US markets, with US search habits, US directories and US budgets. East African businesses get handed those templates and wonder why they do not fit. Customers here search on phones, switch between English, Swahili, French and local languages, and care a great deal about whether a business is real.
Vatam is built for that reality. We are a SEO, AEO, GEO and content marketing agency, based in Kigali, Rwanda, working with businesses in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Vatam is owned and led by Victor Olanrewaju, its founder. Our office is at 4th Floor, East Wing, Kigali Heights, Kigali, Rwanda. You can also find Victor on LinkedIn.
What do we believe?
- Honest reporting beats good-looking reporting. You get the baseline, including the parts that are unflattering, and the same measures every month.
- Foundations come first. Titles, speed, structure, schema markup and a clear entity. Content on a broken base is wasted effort.
- No guarantees we cannot keep. Nobody outside Google, OpenAI and the other platforms controls rankings or AI mentions, so we do not promise either.
- Content needs a named expert behind it. Search engines and AI assistants both lean toward sources that show who is speaking and why they know.
Who is behind Vatam?
Vatam is founder-led. Victor Olanrewaju founded it. He has six years in editorial and SEO, with bylines at Benzinga, BeInCrypto, CCN, AMBCrypto and Coin Edition. He is HubSpot SEO certified.
Two results from that work are worth naming because you can check them. In 2021 he ranked number one on Google for “XRP price prediction”, and one AMBCrypto article passed 250,000 reads in five days. Both were crypto topics where many publishers chase the same query, which is a good school for how attention and authority work.
Today he works with US and East African businesses on being found when the search box is an AI assistant. For East African clients, the same discipline applies: understand the reader, earn the trust, measure honestly.
How do we work?
Remotely from Kigali, and founder-led, so the person who scopes your work is involved in doing it. We follow four steps.
- Audit and baseline. Where you appear in Google, whether the main AI assistants name you, and what is holding you back.
- Foundation. Technical fixes, entity clarity and schema markup.
- Content and authority. Pages and guides that rank, get cited and convert.
- Track and compound. Monthly reports, including AI-answer checks on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
Engagements are scoped after a free AI visibility audit, which helps us connect before you decide and gives you a baseline to watch over time. Read about our home base in Kigali, or see how we serve Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
What do we not do?
We do not buy links or run link farms. They can get a site penalised, and they do nothing for whether an AI assistant trusts you.
We do not publish mass-produced AI content. Pages with no real expertise behind them rarely earn citations, and they put your reputation at risk.
We do not guarantee a number one ranking or an AI mention. If someone does, ask how.
Where is the proof?
Our case studies are real and limited. LAGE Lightings, formerly Lights Architect and a Lagos luxury lighting brand, saw sessions up 233% year on year, and ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude now name it first for luxury lighting questions in Nigeria. Lens & Co by Tiara, a Lagos eyewear store, was cited by no AI answers in July 2026. After a rebuild and relaunch in October 2026, Google’s AI Overviews now name it and cite its guides for two Lagos buying queries, and ChatGPT and Claude now mention it too.
Both are Lagos businesses, not East African clients. We cite them because they show the method on trust-heavy local retail, and we would rather be clear about that than imply more.
Want to know where you stand? Request the free AI visibility audit through the contact form or at victor@vatam.co.
Frequently asked questions
Who runs Vatam?
Vatam is founder-led by Victor Olanrewaju, who has six years in editorial and SEO and holds a HubSpot SEO certification. He is based in Kigali, Rwanda. Clients work directly with the person who scopes and oversees their engagement.
Where is Vatam based?
Vatam is based in Kigali, Rwanda. We serve clients in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania remotely from Kigali, and we do not operate offices elsewhere. All of our work, from the audit to monthly reporting, is done online.
Does Vatam guarantee rankings or AI mentions?
No. Nobody outside the search and AI platforms controls those outcomes. We guarantee a measured baseline, honest monthly reporting and the work that moves the signals, such as technical health, entity clarity and useful content.
How do I start working with Vatam?
Request the free AI visibility audit through the contact form or by emailing victor@vatam.co. We review your Google visibility, AI-assistant mentions and technical health, then share what we find. If it makes sense to continue, we scope an engagement afterwards.