There are a lot of reasons you may want or need to build a camp fire. The most obvious is warmth. A campfire will keep you warm through a chilly night. Another reason is to purify water. The most reliable way to make questionable water safe to drink is by boiling. After clean water, hot food is also often better than cold food. Camp fires are a place where scouts can relax after a day camping or hiking.
There are a lot of ways to start a camp fire. The oldest way to create a spark is with a flint and steel. This was basically an actual piece of flint and an iron striker. This was how Native Americans built fires.
The flint and steel was improved upon by creating rods of a special mixture of metals that would easily spark when scraped. This is the kind of fire steel that we use. They can be in the form of a simple rod and striker or they can be a little more complicated like a blast match or a sparky. No matter what kind of fire steel you have, this is the most reliable way to build a fire.
These things are called Fire Pistons, they start a small ember using compression. They do work, but you have to use char cloth to start the ember and they are tricky. Fire Pistons are also expensive. Unlike a fire steel, these won't work if they got wet.
Other less reliable ways to start your fire would be a magnifying glass. You can only concentrate sunlight if its sunny out.
Matches and lighters are great fire starters too, provided you can keep them dry. You can start a fire by "rubbing sticks together", heat is created by friction. Native Americans used a bow drill to generate the heat to make a fire, other native peoples used friction troughs.
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