This paper will compare the interwar history of two geographical regions: the Fergana Valley in Central Asia, and the Ilemi Triangle in East Africa. In the 1920s and 1930s, these regions shared similar features and underwent a similar process. They hosted nomadic communities who competed for pastureland and scarce water resources, and they were divided by new borders imposed by a distant power: Soviet Moscow in the case of Fergana, imperial London in the case of Ilemi. Both regions became, and remain, the site of violent conflict and contested borders. The paper will draw from archival documents previously retrieved from the British National Archives and the State Archives of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. The paper aims to help us understand the origins and contemporary dynamics of borderland conflict, and will make an evidence-based contribution to current debates about the status of Central Asia as a world region, asking whether Central Asia’s experience in the Soviet period, and the concomitant legacies of this experience, are comparable to those of former British colonies in the Global South.