Metrics, Morality and Miniatures of the State: How Banking Institutions Govern Through Numbers in an African State

This article explores how service metrics- Net Promoter Scores, complaint dashboards, and KPIs - function as moral and affective instruments of governance in Sierra Leone’s postwar banking sector. Drawing on interviews and institutional documents from four banks, the study reveals how mid-level staff internalize metrics as ethical mandates, using them to demonstrate care, stage legitimacy, and interpret institutional worth. Rather than acting purely as tools of discipline, metrics serve as symbolic infrastructures that mediate trust and public expectation in an environment of infrastructural fragility. We conceptualize this dynamic as “metricized morality” and propose a meso-level model of governance, where staff act as moral brokers between institutional authority and citizen demand. The study fills geographic, sectoral, and conceptual gaps in the literature on quantification and governmentality by situating everyday metrics at the heart of moral rule. Metrics do not merely reflect service; they fabricate care, negotiate legitimacy, and govern effectively in fractured institutional environments.