The singer turned activist will announce the landmark development on Monday.

Geldof was one of the main driving forces behind Live Aid, the 1980s concerts that brought together the biggest rock and pop acts in the world to raise money for famine-stricken Ethiopia.

Rwanda showed genocide is still with us

The former Boomtown Rat - who has recently entered the euro debate - has campaigned on issues relating to famines but has also helped mark genocide memorials.

The Aegis Institute, due to open in 2005, will give a permanent home to the work of the Genocide Prevention Initiative.

Launched by Dr Stephen Smith and and Dr James Smith in London in 2000, the initiative hopes that by studying why different ethnic groups massacre each other.

Analysts have not explained why "ethnic cleansing" as in the former Yugoslavia and genocide such as in Rwanda persists today.

The massacre in Srebrenica in 1995 of up to 8,000 men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces recently caused the resignation of the Dutch Government.

Permanent exhibition

And the Belgian Government has also apologised for the international community's failure to stop the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis by Hutu extremists in 1994.

The centre will be sited alongside the renowned Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire and has been designed by award-winning architects the RH Partnership.

It will house a permanent exhibition on the causes and consequences of genocide, as well as education, conference and research facilities.

"When genocidal ideology causes a tragedy, it can affect us all. That's why we all need to know about it," stated Dr James Smith.

Launching the Aegis Institute at the Holocaust Centre, Geldof will be joined by Marcus Storch, vice-president of the Nobel Commission.

Mr Storch will dedicate a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who risked his life to save tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis.