By Ange Aboa and Loucoumane Coulibaly

ABIDJAN, April 19 (Reuters) - A convoy of trucks laden with cotton from Burkina Faso drew up in Ivory Coast's capital Yamoussoukro on Thursday in a sign of a yearned-for economic revival days after the nation started reuniting after civil war.

President Laurent Gbagbo declared the war over on Monday when he and his new prime minister, rebel chief Guillaume Soro, watched the razing of a checkpoint in a U.N. buffer zone between the rebel north and loyalist south after a new peace deal.

On Thursday nearly 40 trucks of cotton passed down the same road, the economic lifeline linking Burkina Faso and Mali to Ivory Coast's main port Abidjan, a route all but severed since the 2002-03 civil war in the top cocoa grower.

"This is the first time for nearly five years that cotton from Burkina has come by road," Gnakale Djedje, deputy managing director of the Port of Abidjan, told Reuters by telephone from Yamoussoukro, where the convoy stopped on its way south.

"This first convoy signals the resumption of Burkina cotton exports via Ivory Coast," Djedje said.

Cotton is a mainstay for millions of farmers and their families in Burkina Faso, Mali and northern Ivory Coast.

Since rebels seized northern Ivory Coast in September 2002, limited amounts of cotton have made it to the port in Abidjan, much of it by train, but most of the crop has been shipped from ports in neighbouring countries, raising haulage costs, squeezing already wafer-thin margins and further undermining the economy.

"Knowing there was a frontier within the country held back transporters, traders and exporters. They avoided Ivory Coast and went to other ports," Jean-Louis Billon, president of the Ivory Coast Chamber of Trade and Industry, told Reuters.

REBEL CAPITAL SPRUCES UP

Further north, Ivory Coast's second biggest city, Bouake, bears the scars of looting and hardship during more than four years as the capital of rebel-held territory since the outbreak of war sent thousands of people fleeing south.

Now banks and traders are tidying up their premises and opening for business again, hopeful that a new peace deal signed by Gbagbo and Soro last month will finally lay the war to rest.

"We've been here since the end of February and little by little customers started to come," Inza Meite, branch manager of the Banque Nationale d'Investissement (BNI), said, sitting down with a new client wanting to open an account.

"Now we have more than we were expecting at the start: there is strong demand for our services, and we are happy to be here to show others the way," he said.

The wave of new activity has come as welcome relief to those skilled locals who stuck it out here throughout the conflict. Of the 19 employees working at BNI, 15 were hired locally.

But competition for still-scarce jobs is growing.

Akwaba, a local non-governmental organisation whose name means "welcome" in the Akan language, has helped 148 families displaced by the war return to the city from Abidjan.

Some, like Hortense Amoin, who sells lengths of colourful fabric known as pagnes, find life has changed in the lean years.

"I've always sold pagnes, and before the war I and my family lived very well on it," Amoin said. "I used to buy pagnes from Togo or Benin for 10,000 CFA francs ($20), then sell them at 17,000 or 18,000 CFA, but now people are selling pagnes for 5,000 CFA. At that price you can't make a profit."

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