New radiative lifetimes have been measured for the 5s 3Po0,1,2 and 5s 1Po1 levels of GeI using a laser-produced plasma subject to selective laser excitation. A diffraction grating based emission spectrometer of moderately high resolution has been used to remeasure the branching ratios of the 4p--5s depopulating transitions. The oscillator strengths of astrophysical interest, which have been derived from these new data, are compared with theoretical values calculated within a pseudo-relativistic Hartree--Fock approach. The new set of f-values has been compared with the few results available in the literature, which are generally characterized by a large scatter and a low accuracy. The solar photospheric abundance of germanium deduced from the new atomic data of the present work is AGe = 3.58 ± 0.05, on the usual logarithmic scale, in agreement with the meteoritic value.