Looking at the NASA map listing fires around the world, it’s hard to miss a part of sub-Saharan Africa in bright red, as if the territory was ravaged by flames. This Thursday, July 30, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Madagascar and some areas of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania appeared to be burning.
The American space agency records fires in real time on its Firms site. The Modis and Viirs modules, embarked on NASA satellites, measure the heat on the surface of the globe to signal an active outbreak. Regardless of its origin, if a fire is detected using their data, it will be displayed on the interactive planisphere.
In France, the forest fires affecting the Gironde, and in particular the Landes de Gascogne massif, are clearly appearing. But these fires, which have burned 42,000 hectares, appear like small scattered red dots near Bordeaux. However, the large bright spot that colors Africa gives the impression of much larger fires than in France.
Screenshot taken on Thursday July 30, 2026 from the NASA Firms website.
Active households linked to agriculture
If these megafires which would ravage the African continent do not seem to worry the authorities or experts, that is normal. Between May and September, it is common for central and southern Africa to be nicknamed the “continent of fire”, the result of a period during which slash-and-burn agriculture is practiced.
This ancestral cultivation technique consists of felling and burning the forest of a plot to clear it and the ashes to make soils otherwise too poor fertile. Farmers then cultivate plants there before leaving the land to rest for several years, to give it time to regenerate, and to be able to reproduce this process later.
As NASA modules detect “thermal anomalies” without distinction from their origin, these controlled and intentional vegetation fires therefore appear on the map. Africa is not the only continent to practice this technique. Slash-and-burn agriculture is also used in humid tropical zones, particularly in the Amazon. This is why the planisphere of the Firms site also covers large areas of Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Paraguay.
Although common and used for millennia, the slash-and-burn technique regularly attracts criticism. It is accused of causing massive deforestation and, by extension, endangering the biodiversity that lives in these spaces. Because of demographic pressure and to intensify harvests, the fallow period of around ten years is also gradually shortened, which weakens the soil. Finally, fires release large quantities of greenhouse gases, which contribute to air pollution and can represent a health hazard.
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