Bob Geldof and Bono, the celebrity activists, are planning next year to bring their G8 campaign to help Africa to Germany as it assumes the chairmanship of the rich countries’ club.

But while their intervention is being welcomed by the government, it is being treated cautiously by German non-governmental groups.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has belatedly expanded her G8 agenda to include priorities on African good governance, investment and anti-Aids work.

After initially announcing that the German presidency would concentrate on more traditional concerns about the global economy, she is keen to raise Germany’s development profile via the summit of leading industrial states.

She has met Bono; they held a much-photographed hug at the Davos world economic summit last January. And Erich Stather, her deputy development minister, said: “Bob Geldof is always a popular figure, and he is pulling in the same direction as us.”

Mr Geldof started his German lobbying earlier this month, when he explained his plans to Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany’s left-leaning development minister, and to Bernd Pfaffenbach, Ms Merkel’s G8 envoy.

Following the Live 8 concerts in 2005 linked to the British G8 summit in Gleneagles, Mr Geldof is planning “intellectual aid” in Germany – a series of debates with German thinkers on African development and the role of the west.

“Government ministers and other politicians will be invited to listen, but will not be allowed to speak,” according to Jeremy Gaines, Mr Geldof’s co-ordinator in Germany.

Data, the London-based campaign group set up by Bono and Mr Geldof, plans to open an office in Berlin next month. They want to work with German film-makers and television companies to raise awareness of Africa’s development needs, Mr Gaines said.

It is unclear whether any live concerts are planned, according to Oliver Buston, Data’s European director.

The first “intellectual aid” discussion is planned for March 22, world water day, to be held in Berlin’s Hertie School of Governance, a public policy university.

Another debate will be held in Berlin during the G8 summit on June 6-8 in Heiligendamm, a Baltic coast resort.

“This event will monitor whether the leaders are living up to their promises from Gleneagles,” Mr Gaines said.

Those promises included $50bn in extra development aid by 2010, and debt relief for poor African countries.

“The German G8 summit should be about turning these pledges into reality,” Mr Buston said.

But Ulla Mikota, director of Venro, an alliance of German development non-governmental groups, said there were “very mixed feelings” about Data’s push into Germany. “We welcome the extra focus on Africa, but they [Geldof and Bono] have a different political style to ours,” she said, noting that Bono was more willing to work with “mainstream actors”, such as tabloid papers, than German NGOs.

Another NGO leader said Mr Geldof, due to visit Berlin in February, “has a bad reputation [among NGOs] in Germany” after he organised a Live 8 concert in Berlin in July 2005 without fully consulting German development pressure groups.