When Dr. Gustavo Cervantes Montero got the good news, he didn't celebrate, not at first.

“At first, I thought it was a mistake,” he said in an e-mail interview.

For the last 10 years, Montero's team from the Universidad de Oriente de Cuba, a 70-year-old Cuban university, has been quietly working on a special project to develop digital educational materials for some of the country’s rural communities, precisely where it's most needed.