A UN statement added: "Around the world, UN Information Centres in Accra, Bujumbura, Pretoria, Tehran, Yaoundé and other places are organising events in honour of Nelson Mandela."
Eminent global citizens, like the former United States President Bill Clinton, visited Mandela personally at his home in South Africa.
Several other groups marked the day with events, including a special General Assembly session at the UN headquarters in New York. Mandela was the big item of the day and speakers drawn from different countries gathered in his honor recalling his contributions.
Delivering his message for the day, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said: "Nelson Mandela gave 67 years of his life to bring change to the people of South Africa. Our gift to him can — and must — be to change our world for the better."
In November 2009, the UN General Assembly declared July 18 "Nelson Mandela International Day."
The Nobel Peace Prize winner's "extra-ordinary life and steadfast commitment to the principles of democracy and reconciliation continues to bea beacon for people of all backgrounds who strive for dignity, justice and freedom," said President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.
They described his personal story as "one of unbreakable will, unwavering integrity and abiding humility."
"By any measure," the statement read: "NelsonMandela has changed the arc of history, transforming his country, continent, and South Africans celebrated with giant cakes, mass renditions of "Happy Birthday" and 67 minutes of good deeds - one for each year of the anti-apartheid leader's struggle against white-minority rule.
But beyond the mawkish tributes to South Africa's first black president, the day revealed the unseemly scramble among companies, politicians and charities for a slice of the reflected glory of "Madiba", the clan name by which he is affectionately known.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) released a 1,450-word eulogy to its totemic former leader, exhorting the country's 50 million people to "continue to build the South Africa of Madiba's dreams".
Away from all the hullabaloo, an increasingly frail Mandela spent the day with close family and friends - and Clinton - in his ancestral village of Qunu in the remote Eastern Cape province.
The Consular-General, South African High Commission in Nigeria, Ambassador Mokgethi Monaisa, and the Neo-Black Movement (NBM) ofAfrica called on the continent's leaders to emulate Mandela's virtues and live for others.
Speaking in Lagos at a programme to mark the day at the Red Cross Society Motherless Babies Home, Yaba, jointly sponsored by the Commission and Unilever Nigeria Plc, the diplomat said that if African leaders live for others rather than for themselves, the poverty, crisis, killings and genocide that have become part and parcel of their countries would be prevented.
The envoy stated that it was because Mandela believed in serving others that made him not to think about revenge when he came out of jail; instead he preached and practised reconciliation.
NBM, a pan-Africanist organisation, in a statement by its Head (Worldwide), Mr. Bemigho Eyeoyibo, noted that Mandela sees himself as the servant of the people.
He added: "Mandela is one of our icons in NBM."
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