I flew about all of my flights in Africa last year on a VFR flightplan which I filed digitally in all but one country (South Sudan). In South-Africa I flew IFR as they do have a radar environment and it was easier. In the rest of Africa I would file VFR but have an IFR route in my flightplan route with VFR as altitude. No problem at all. They do expect position reports (as they have no radar environment) but in most cases I was off the radio after 10-30 minutes and did send some position reports here and there through a relay with a KLM or Air France guy flying up high and willing to relay my message. VFR flying is no issue at all in Africa.
Resurrecting this old thread to add a useful piece of information:
A few weeks ago I had the chance to visit the HungaroControl facility near LHBP, where all en-route and (civilian) approach controllers work. FIC is also housed there, in the very same room and having identical workstations to radar controllers. This fact has been known before, but what surprised me is that the system parses VFR flight plans much like IFR flight plans, even those with names of obscure villages and non-standard abbreviations. This way the planned route is plotted on the screen and the FISO can use some of the tools used by controllers to predict potential conflicts and airspace busts. The take home message of the meeting with FIC personnel was that if you were flying in Hungary VFR, please file a flight plan. It will make their work much easier and your flights more stress-free.
