In this paper, I enquire government motivations for joining international literacy assessments which play a central and growing role in the ‘governance by data’ (Hamilton 2013) trend, responding to the need to inform evidence-based policy with internationally comparable, statistical indicators. It is within this trend and with a case study of UNESCO’s Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme in Laos and Mongolia, that I argue countries join ILAs for reasons that go beyond the stated educational policy agenda and are not only about the numbers they produce. From an ANT perspective, governments engaging in LAMP translate into an adapted identity and temporarily stabilize into a heterogeneous network of aligned allies and interests built upon black boxed, temporarily accepted truths, furthering the overarching interests of the alliance, whilst furthering each ally’s agenda – i.e. measuring literacy in a culturally and linguistically sensitive way for ‘better’ data whilst an ally is statistically eliminating the ‘illiteracy problem’ under the same alliance. I argue that countries join ILAs as a global alliance mechanism – a way of belonging and ‘putting themselves on the map’ (Grek, 2009) whilst risking ‘bad’ numbers. ANT reveals insightful understandings of motivation in ILAs and the management of problematic statistical outcomes.