Wow, that is truly remarkable. They accept their first A400 in August and then that December they send one to Africa. And with the Fench equivalent of SECDEF aboard! Very impressive.
But this does seem to answer my original question. If the French have operational A400s and it could do the job, why would they bother borrowing UK C-17s and crews to do the Mali mission shown in the link? The simple answer would be that the A400 could not do what the UK C-17s did. The full answer may be more complex and may be as much related to an aircraft and flight and maintenance crews that are not quite ready for prime time yet. But I don't know.