I have an electric lighter that uses lightning to ignite stuff. So no, fire isn’t needed. Just enough heat to ignite what you want to burn. Great for cigarettes; not very good for lighting the bowl of a pipe tho.

I also am old enough to remember cigarette lighters in cars. They just made a metal coil red hot and you touched it to your cigarette to light it.

Friction is also enough. Ever heard of starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together? Or flint and steel? This is just using friction to generate enough heat to ignite kindling (though the flint and steel makes it easier since the flint gets way hotter and creates sparks much faster than the stick method). This is also why meteors burn up entering the atmosphere and why space craft need all that ceramic plating to survive re-entry: the friction of the air due to the speed of the object is enough to get super heated.