(Adds EU Commission and African Union paragraphs 15-16)

By Tom Armitage

BERLIN, May 24 (Reuters) - Africa has leapt to the top of Chancellor Angela Merkel's agenda for a G8 summit next month, as hopes for an agreement on combating climate change fade.

Unlike a G8 meeting two years ago in Gleneagles, Scotland, where British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced a commitment from world leaders to double development aid to Africa by 2010, Merkel is unlikely to grab headlines with a major new aid plan.

Instead aid groups hope she can convince other G8 nations to live up to the generous debt and development aid commitments they made in 2005 amid signs that some -- including Germany -- are falling dangerously behind on their promises.

"The time for setting targets in the international community is over," Merkel said on Thursday in a speech to the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.

"Now it is about delivering and there is a great deal of political credibility at stake," she added. "We will live up to our promises. I say that quite clearly."

The summit in the Baltic coast resort of Heiligendamm is expected by some to be a shot in the arm for efforts to reduce African poverty after the continent's problems slipped off the agenda at last year's G8 meeting in St. Petersburg.

Underlining Africa's importance, Berlin played host to various conferences this week that brought together delegates from the continent with German politicians and business people.

"I believe that Germany will not allow the allow the ball to drop," said Nigerian World Bank executive Obiageli Ezekwesili at one conference this week. "It will re-energise the focus on Africa that we saw in Gleneagles."

NEW METHODS

Merkel is pushing new ways of tackling African poverty. For instance, she wants to use revenue from the auction of carbon emissions certificates to help fund Germany's development aid goal of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product by 2015.

She has also encouraged German firms to invest more in Africa, part of an increasing awareness among G8 nations of the rising influence of Chinese companies in Africa.

The G8 nations are also expected to stump up more cash for the fight against HIV/AIDS in African mothers and children, who could drive efforts to boost the continent's economy.

However, Debt AIDS Trade Africa or DATA, the campaign group co-founded by U2 singer Bono, says Germany is one of the development aid laggards among the Group of Eight nations -- currently around 700 million euros short of its commitments.

The group says only Japan and Britain are on track to meet their commitments, while Italy, the United States, Russia, France and Canada as well as Germany all lag behind.

"Last year, G8 nations did less than half of what they needed to do to meet their Gleneagles commitments while this year, they have done at best a third of what is required," said DATA's managing director Jamie Drummond.

In Brussels on Thursday, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and African Union President John Kufuor appealed for EU countries to keep their aid promises.

Barroso said he had written to EU leaders noting some EU countries had not respected commitments and some had done so mainly by writing off outstanding debts of developing countries.

Irish rockers Bono and Bob Geldof, who campaign for African aid, have both met Merkel in recent months to press their case.

"There is a certain moral compass in the German people that the world needs to see," Bono told reporters recently.

For a Factbox on G8 measures to help Africa, click on [ID:nL24115277] (For more information about emergency relief visit Reuters AlertNet http://www.alertnet.org email: alertnet@reuters.com; +44 207 542 5791)

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Brussels)

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