The first birthday celebrations of Nelson Mandela following his death in December will have South Africans across the country spending 67 minutes helping those in need.

But Google is also honouring the former South African and African National Congress (ANC) president with a Doodle on Mandela day.

Mandela, who would have turned 96 on Friday, has been honoured by the search engine giant for his role in bringing down apartheid and spearheading reconciliation in the country.

The creator of the Doodle, Katy Wu, has told Google in an interview that she “read about Nelson Mandela online and in books to get a better idea of who he was as a person.”

“I also received a lot of help from our local doodle manager in South Africa when it came to fact checking smaller lesser known details about South African culture, history, and people,” said Wu.

“Something that stood out to me about Nelson Mandela was his eloquent way with words. I thought his words gave a great insight into the kind of man he was, so I wanted to focus the creative direction of the doodle on his quotes against a backdrop of the history of South Africa,” added the artist, who on her Twitter page describes herself as also having worked on animated feature films at CinderBiter, Pixar and Laika. .

Google’s Doodle has a number of quotes from Mandela such as: "No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion."

The Doodle also depicts images of Mandela behind bars.

Mandela spent 27 years in prison from 1962 after he was convicted by the National Party run apartheid government for conspiring to overthrow the state.

Upon being released in 1990, Mandela became a global icon regarded as among the greatest leaders of all time.

His death in December last year also prompted global leaders, such as US president Barack Obama, to honour Mandela, also known as Madiba, in a speech to thousands in a rainy Johannesburg soccer city stadium.

Mandela passed away on 5 December 2013 after fighting a respiratory infection.