The joint venture will be majority owned by Millward Brown and will initially cover East Africa including Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, where the headquarters will be based. The current Millward Brown Kenya office will be merged into the joint business and later in 2008 the operation will extend to West Africa from a base in Lagos, Nigeria.
Charles Foster, managing director of Millward Brown South Africa, said: "We already have a very successful operation in South Africa, from which we work with clients across Africa.
"Our partnership with Scangroup is a natural progression that will allow us to better serve our clients across the continent by offering a range of bespoke services and on the ground local expertise across all regions in Africa."
Scangroup's services include advertising, media planning and buying, consultancy, PR and experiential marketing.
Bharat Thakrar, chief executive of Scangroup, said: "Countries across Africa are enjoying a period of economic growth, with many multinational companies expanding their operations in Africa. The increased opportunities that this offers marketers is very exciting.
"We have said in the past that we were keen to partner with a leading market research provider in order to complement our existing services and this is the culmination of that plan."
Scangroup is the holding company for advertising agencies Lowe Scanad Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, Thompson Kenya, Grey East Africa, McCann Kenya, FCB Tanzania and Redsky. It also controls media planning and buying companies Media Compete, Media Initiative East Africa and Universal McCann, as well as public relations company Scanad Public Relations and experiential marketing company Roundtrip.