You can do it with any region as long as it isn't one with a huge population like india or china. I got the impossible badge with South Africa, but only because Mad. infected early. Starting with mad. is it's own problem as it takes forever to spread the disease so you rely on the second region to cause the infection. My 2 mad. games failed to infect everywhere before borders shut. Drug 4 is a waste of ep imo. Maybe even drug 3 is, as the hospital shut down quickly if you do things right.
And even following these guides you are looking at probably 100 restarts before you can wipe the globe.
I want to like this game but the fact is even with a perfect strategy it's 99% luck that you will infect Madagascar. Must have had 30 games with madagascar as the only remaining region to infect.