Many people regard a disability as a horrible and unwanted thing. They also mistreat those with disabilities as aliens or a minority group that can be pushed aside. However, being disabled does not stop one from achieving great things in life. Farida Bedwei, a software engineer in Ghana, has cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder that affects body movement and muscle coordination but does not interfere with the ability to learn. Bedwei is the co-founder and the chief technical officer of the software company and is one of the most powerful women of financial tech­nology in all of Africa. According to Bed­wei, her greatest achievement is creating a cloud software platform that is used by 130 micro-finance companies worldwide. Bedwei demonstrates how she changed her life and hopes to influence others with her ideas.

Bedwei was homeschooled until 12. Her family saw her passion for comput­ers so she skipped her senior year of high school and enrolled in a one-year com­puter course at the St. Michael Information Technology Center at the age of 15. From there, she discovered her passion and fol­lowed her aspirations to become a soft­ware engineer.

After graduating, she began to look for work and found her role at Soft, a premier software company in the region. 3 years later, Bedwei found another work site as a software architect at Rancard Solu­tions. She stayed there for 9 years, 3 of which were part-time during school. She received a diploma in not only Informa­tion Systems, but alsoe - technology. She reached for a degree after 2 diplomas because in Ghana, a degree is what stands out the most. She completed a one-year degree in England and returned to Ghana to start up the cloud software platform called gKudi.

Bedwei overcame her disability and achieved success in becoming an out­standing influence in Africa. She has sup­ported groups to encourage girls to pursue IT careers, serving as a role model for children. She reassures those with disabled children that despite their shortcomings, their children can become successful with whatever special abilities they possess. Overall, Bedwei has truly become an in­fluence for people with disabilities and a guide to those who are lost.