Kenya

Tarbei, who claimed the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Youth Championships 800m title in Colombia in July ahead of his team-mate, clocked the fifth-fastest time of the year as he crossed the line in 1min 46.05sec.

In the battle of the top two boy’s 800m runners in the world, Bett led at the turn coming into the home stretch but Tarbei powered to the front late on, with the world youth silver medallist finishing in 1:46.15, while Scotland’s Ben Greenwood clinched bronze.

Closing his historic visit with an address to the Kenyan people, Obama traced the arc of the country's evolution from colonialism to independence, as well as his own family's history here. 

Today, Obama said, young Kenyans are no longer constrained by the limited options of his grandfather, a cook for the country's former British rulers, or his father, who left to seek an education in America.

Closing out a historic visit to the land of his father's birth, Obama said Kenya has come so far in just his lifetime, but can go even further.

"You can choose the path to progress, but it requires making some important choices," he said in a speech to several thousand Kenyans packed into an indoor arena here in Kenya's capital, a normally bustling place that largely has been on lockdown during Obama's stay.

Obama says eliminating multiple legs of travel to get from one place to the other would be a boon for business and tourism.

Kenya's $1 billion tourism industry has suffered in the wake of mass assaults carried out in recent years by the al-Shabab extremist group, which is based across the border in Somalia.

"Africa is one of the fastest growing regions of the world," Obama said. "People are being lifted out of poverty."

Obama's visit to Kenya — the first by a sitting U.S. president — has been highly anticipated in a nation that views him as a local son. The president's late father was born in Kenya and many family members still live here, including his elderly step-grandmother.

"This is personal for me," Obama said. "There's a reason why my name is Barack Hussein Obama."

The president spent the evening reuniting with his Kenyan family, including his elderly step-grandmother who made the trip to the capital of Nairobi from her rural village. U.S. and Kenyan flags lined the main road from Nairobi's airport, and billboards heralding Obama's trip dotted the city.

"I don't think that Kenyans think of Obama as African-American. They think of him as Kenyan-American," said EJ Hogendoorn, deputy program director for Africa at the International Crisis Group.

Ahead of Obama's arrival Friday evening, large numbers of security forces patrolled in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Several U.S. military aircraft were spotted flying around the city. There have also been significant military attacks on Islamic militant targets in Somalia in recent weeks.

It was a striking experience for a young man — and future American president — struggling to understand how a country he had never seen and a Kenyan family he barely knew had shaped his identity.

"My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances, and grudges I did not yet understand," Obama wrote in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father," about the airport encounter.