Brands/Products
5 Apps to Help You Achieve a More Balanced Life
In a world that seems to be filled with stressful news, the only thing you can control is your reaction to what’s happening around you. Here are 5 apps to help you calmly navigate your way through the hustle and bustle that every day brings.
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Meditation and mindfulness
Rated as one of the best meditation and mindfulness apps on the market, Headspace will bring calm into your busy life with hundreds of meditations of varying lengths for you to choose from in its comprehensive library. Perfect for beginners, the app has convenient features like being able to set reminders, track your progress, and download sessions to experience offline. Perks also include sleep casts to induce restful sleep, calming music playlists and child-friendly content. Other great choices are Calm, which aims to lower anxiety and boost tranquillity, and Waking Up by Sam Harris, which offers guided meditation and mindfulness techniques for a calmer mindset.
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Manage family tasks
Has the trash been put out, and have the kids’ toys been picked up? It’s many a working mom’s endless and stressful battle to keep track of who has (or hasn’t!) done their chores. OurHome offers a simple way to coordinate chores and turn doing them into a game. The app allows family members to create to-do lists and assign tasks to each other, such as wiping counters or setting the table, with a note box allowing comments to be added. Adults can award points to tasks, with kids able to exchange those points for rewards such as pizza or an extra hour of play. Suddenly washing the dishes becomes meaningful, with kids incentivised to help keep the family home humming along happily.
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Create more time for you
We all know how lovely it feels to walk into a sparkling clean house, but if your home is looking messy because you don’t have the time or energy to maintain it, it could leave you feeling more frustrated than calm. Take the burden of tackling household chores off your shoulders by hiring in help through the new SweepSouth home-cleaning services app.
Quick and easy to use, this app allows you to hire a trustworthy, reliable, and professional domestic worker to come in for a few hours to clean your home, allowing you to take a break and relax, spending time doing the things you love. And, says SweepSouth Country Manager Awazi Angbalaga, by making a booking through the app, you directly create work opportunities at a time when many domestic workers are struggling to find employment.
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Keep your focus in a busy environment
Having worked from home for so long, the distractions of a busy office space can feel stressful once you return back to work. To help you focus, A Soft Murmur offers a simple yet effective solution, with various ambient noises to drown out distractions and help you focus. Choose from a selection of sounds found in nature, such as the soft patter of rain or the easy sweep of the wind, each softly soothing, and overlay them for a hypnotically comforting effect.
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Keep kids entertained
For those moments when you need to keep the kids entertained for a little while, YouTube Kids comes to the rescue. This easy-to-use app allows you to control what content your children view. Choose between an option to approve all content yourself or enter your child’s age group and let the app do the job of curating suitable content. You can also set a timer to limit viewing time, block certain content, turn off search options, and change search history settings.
It’s easy to get so swept along by all the things we need to do in a day that we forget about ourselves and our health. But remember that tomorrow will be just as full of demands and stress as today is. Use every bit of help available to you so that, now and then, you can stop and slow things down.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
To make finding the right service provider or reaching the right customer seamless, popular local information portal, Connect Nigeria, has introduced a Quote Request platform.
Connect Nigeria described the new system as “a digital solution designed to make connecting with service providers faster, easier, and more reliable.”
It said the Quote Request was built for consumers who need services quickly and want trusted options without the stress of searching endlessly; and service providers and businesses looking for real, high-intent customers without spending heavily on marketing.
“Whether you need a caterer for an event, a plumber for your home, or a designer for your brand, the platform is designed to connect you with the right people,” Connect Nigeria added.
“By connecting demand directly with supply, the platform creates a more structured and dependable marketplace,” it further stated.
At its core, the Quote Request simplifies the entire process of finding and offering services.
To use the service, users have to submit a request describing the service or product needed, which is then sent to verified vendors on the platform. Interested providers respond within 1–2 days, and users compare offers and choose what works best for their needs and budget.
“Instead of searching for vendors, the vendors come to you, with relevant, tailored responses,” Connect Nigeria explained.
The company expects this new platform to eliminate the stress of endless online searches, delayed or vague responses, and uncertainty about service quality.
As for businesses, it solves poor visibility, inconsistent customer flow, and lost opportunities due to slow response times.
Connect Nigeria Quote Request mobile app is now available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
An institutional investor, First Ally Capital, has strengthened a leading Nigerian financial technology company, Mathesis Analytics, to scale its proprietary credit decisioning infrastructure.
It made this possible by injecting fresh capital into the firm, which specialises in AI-powered credit decisioning infrastructure, an action that will directly support the growth and scaling of Mathesis’ core mission of providing the intelligence and infrastructure needed to bridge the credit gap for millions of unscored or underscored individuals across Nigeria.
With this investment, Mathesis will enable financial institutions to confidently assess and extend credit to borrowers who lack a formal credit history by leveraging an expanded pool of alternative behavioural and transactional data.
To date, Mathesis’ systems have supported more than 8 million loans for over 2 million unique borrowers in Nigeria, and the company is actively deploying its infrastructure to establish a growing pan-African footprint.
With the investment from First Ally Capital, Mathesis is well positioned to transform how the credit ecosystem operates, driving financial inclusion in partnership with lenders across the continent.
A significant barrier to credit access in Nigeria, which prides itself on being Africa’s largest economy, is data fragmentation. Borrowers frequently build positive financial behaviours across multiple digital platforms by repaying microfinance loans, saving through fintech wallets, or servicing Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) facilities.
However, under traditional credit infrastructure, these achievements remain invisible to new lenders.
Mathesis addresses this challenge through the concept of Personal Equity—the quantified expression of an individual’s financial behaviour aggregated across every institution with which they have transacted.
By translating these disparate signals into a precise, portable measure of creditworthiness, Mathesis creates a comprehensive credit identity that reflects the full breadth of a person’s financial life.
“True financial inclusion cannot be achieved in a vacuum; it requires structural collaboration in which lenders and fintech companies work as partners within the ecosystem.
“This investment from First Ally Capital validates our approach to reshaping credit infrastructure. By quantifying Personal Equity, we empower lenders to safely look beyond the constraints of formal credit histories and recognise a borrower’s true creditworthiness. This capital enables us to accelerate our pan-African expansion while maintaining the robust, institutional-grade infrastructure our partners rely on,” the chief executive of Mathesis Analytics, Winston Osuchukwu, stated.
On his part, the chief executive of First Ally Capital, Mr Ebenezer Olufowose, said, “At First Ally Capital, we pride ourselves on being a one-stop destination for financial solutions, offering a diverse portfolio of services ranging from investment banking and asset management to trusteeship, inclusive banking, and real estate.
“Our investment in Mathesis Analytics reflects our strong belief in the company’s vision and our commitment to supporting forward-thinking enterprises that deliver excellence.”
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
The chief executive of Canal+ Africa, Mr David Mignot, has disclosed that MultiChoice is now fully integrated into the media group.
Mr Mignot disclosed this via a statement issued on Thursday, noting that this development marks a new phase in the evolution of one of Africa’s leading pay television operators.
He noted that the integration positions MultiChoice within a global media organisation with an extensive international footprint.
“MultiChoice is now a full subsidiary of a truly international media group operating in 70 countries. The group was founded in France, is listed in London and Johannesburg, and has a strong African presence with operations in more than 45 countries,” Mr Mignot said.
The statement underscores the scale of the combined business, highlighting Canal+’s global reach alongside its significant investments across Africa.
The completion of the transaction is expected to strengthen MultiChoice’s position in the African media and entertainment market by giving it access to the broader resources, expertise and international capabilities of the Canal+ Group, while reinforcing the group’s commitment to the continent.
MultiChoice operates across sub-Saharan Africa through platforms including DStv and GOtv, serving millions of subscribers with entertainment, sports and news content.
