I am trying to export a list of text strings from Python to MATLAB using scipy.io. I would like to use scipy.io because my desired .mat file should include both numerical matrices (which I learned to do here) and text cell arrays.

I tried:

import scipy.io
my_list = ['abc', 'def', 'ghi']
scipy.io.savemat('test.mat', mdict={'my_list': my_list)

In MATLAB, I load test.mat and get a character array:

my_list =

adg
beh
cfi

How do I make scipy.io export a list into a MATLAB cell array?