Apart from simply connected spaces, a non-simply connected co-H-space is a typical example of a space X with a coaction of Bπ1 (X) along rX: X → Bπ1 (X), the classifying map of the universal covering. If such a space X is actually a co-H-space, then the fibrewise p-localization of rX (or the ‘almost’ p-localization of X) is a fibrewise co-H-space (or an ‘almost’ co-H-space, respectively) for every prime p. In this paper, we show that the converse statement is true, i.e. for a non-simply connected space X with a coaction of Bπ1 (X) along rX, X is a co-H-space if, for every prime p, the almost p-localization of X is an almost co-H-space.