No surprises here as it is a regular occurence in Africa
In South Africa in particular the procedure has been used on numerous occasions when there has been lack of ATC to provide a service but this is usually done either on a FIS frequency or on a sector that has minimal traffic flow.
Usually it will only be done at quieter times on the ACC frequencies like during a night shift and it has occured before that upper level airspace has been downgraded to Class G and either no service (TIBA) or an information only service has been applied.
The oceanic sector is regularly closed due lack of staff and downgraded to Class G.
As for the rest of africa well its pretty ops normal as there are hardly any ATCs in most of these states and none seem to stay through the night so much so that there is a specific TIBA frquency published by IATA 126.9 (IFBP) so that aircraft can "self separate when flying through the continent)