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People walk past the display board of FOCAC outside a trade market complex in Beijing, on September 2, 2024. Photo: VCG

A shipment of Kenyan dried wild sea cucumber arrived at the Changsha Huanghua International Airport in Central China's Hunan Province and hit the market on Thursday, marking the first entry of Kenyan dried sea cucumber to China after a protocol granting market access to Kenyan wild-caught aquatic products, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Saturday.

The arrival of the shipment weighing 300 kilograms has further diversified China's sea cucumber import channel, which previously mainly involve North America and Northern Europe, the report said, citing an importer.

In the first eight months of the year, Hunan imported agricultural products worth of 300 million yuan ($42.79 million) from African countries, up 31.9 percent year-on-year, according to Xinhua, citing local customs data.

A Chinese expert said that the new imports, following those involving fish, demonstrate the complementarity of China and African countries in the trade of agricultural products.

"In this case, the East African nation's seafood resources and processing capability can meet Chinese consumers' vast appetite for sea cucumber, and the previous achievement on practical bilateral cooperation, such as the setting up of direct air links, has ensured the logistics of this trade," Song Wei, a professor at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times on Saturday.

Chinese investment and technology transfers have also boosted the development of the local economy, Song said.

Earlier in September, a shipment of frozen mutton weighing 900 kilograms from Madagascar arrived in Hunan, China's first import shipment of mutton from Africa.

China has become African agricultural products' second-largest export destination. In the first seven months of the year, China imported agricultural products worth of 25.35 billion yuan, up 7.2 percent year-on-year, customs data showed.

At the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in early September, China signed protocols with African countries covering imports of agricultural products, granting market access on items including soybeans from Zambia and avocados from Zimbabwe.

China has signed market access protocols governing the imports of 22 items of agricultural products with a total of 14 African countries, according to China's National Development and Reform Commission.