For many countries in Africa, dams have a prominent historical status as arguably the premier infrastructure project, delivering electricity, irrigation, water and the spectacle of development. From the late-colonial period grand, high modernist developmental thinking imbued these large concreate infrastructures with statebuilding potential, the capability of creating new political economies that would sustain colonialism or found powerful independent countries. However, the decade from the 1990s-to mid-2000s saw few dams constructed and major funders such as the World Bank pull out. Dams have since returned over the past decade, particularly in Africa. This return of dams therefore sparks questions about the state of politics and of development ideology in Africa. Given the specific intertwining of dams and high modernism, this paper asks to what extent this ideology has persisted in underpinning practises of the dam resurgence, using case studies of Rwanda and Tanzania. This article argues that high modernism remains an important ideological influence but one that has become increasingly emmeshed with reformist ideas dictating an opposing set of dam-building policies. The consequent ideological bricolage shapes the complex outcomes of the dam-resurgence, as does specific historical and political contexts. Consequently, this paper concludes that the dam resurgence does not replicate the political economy and political ecology of the 20th century. Rather an interesting mixture of depoliticised ideas imbuing electricity with development and dictating expert-centric knowledge production sit alongside practises of mitigation and compensation. This research comes from my thesis examining the resurgence of dam building through three particular case-studies in Rwanda and Tanzania; namely the Nyabarongo dam (Rwanda) Stiegler’s Gorge (Tanzania) and Rusumo (on the Tanzania-Rwanda border). Research involved elite-level interviews and ground-level fieldwork with each dams’ local community.