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Miguel Díaz-Canel called for the acceleration of artificial intelligence development in Cuba and promised "technological sovereignty" during a meeting with professors from the University of Havana, reported the state agency Prensa Latina.
Before academics from the faculties of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science, and Social Communication, the leader reviewed artificial intelligence projects born in academia, as part of a series of tours of institutions with experiences in digital transformation.
He also spoke with officials from the ministries of Higher Education and Communications.
The Presidency of the Republic reported that in the meeting "it was emphasized that AI is transforming all spheres of society, hence the importance for Cuba to accelerate its steps toward national sovereignty."
The strategic importance of having our own national data was addressed, along with the transformation this technology brings to education from primary to university levels, the relationship between academia and industry, and the need to cultivate a digital culture in society, the media outlet reported.
The regime has been building a narrative of technological sovereignty for months. In November 2025, the Consortium for Artificial Intelligence of Cuba was established with 22 founding members, including the University of Havana, UCI, CUJAE, ETECSA, BioCubaFarma, and the Ministry of Communications.
That same month, the regime was already aiming to develop its own artificial intelligence with projects like "Cecilia," a generative language model trained with a Cuban text corpus to understand Caribbean Spanish.
In April 2025, Díaz-Canel signed an agreement with Russia to promote artificial intelligence through a joint laboratory, and in January of that year, Cuba joined the BRICS+ artificial intelligence network.
The gap between official discourse and the reality of the country is, nonetheless, vast. Less than 8% of Cuban households are connected to the internet, making Cuba the second country with the worst connectivity in Latin America, just above Haiti.
In December 2025, a blackout left more than 50% of the radio bases in Havana and Pinar del Río without signal, while Santiago de Cuba operated with barely 3% communication coverage after the collapse of its infrastructure.
This connectivity crisis is compounded by the "rate hike" from ETECSA in May 2025, which drove internet access costs to levels that are unattainable for most: Cubans can only purchase 6 GB for 360 Cuban pesos before having to pay in foreign currency, with a minimum wage of just 2,100 pesos.
The digital transformation in Cuba is progressing at a snail's pace, and the international community is also aware of it: in February 2026, Estonia suspended funding for the "Cuba Digital" project, which was allocated three million euros from the European Union, citing contradictions between modernization goals and the political reality of the Island.
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