Slash and burn?

It surely looks that way.

Angola: Normal forest Area with fires

Congo: Normal forest Area with fires

Madagascar: Normal forest Area with fires

Madagascar is especially ghastly, because there are vast places without any trees to cut down.

Google images for Madagascar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation

Changing the world: Documentation of large-scale human-induced earth-surface change in images from satellites, the Space Shuttle program, and the International Space Station