The incident, which took place July 2, 2008, is detailed in a cable that was released Friday as part of a third tranche of UFO files made public pursuant to President Trump's February declassification order.
The cable, which was circulated throughout the US government and military hierarchy in the final months of the George W. Bush administration, described a craft that "hovered at an undetermined altitude directly over the Harare airport."
"At one point during observation, 'beams' were observed emanating from the object," read the cable, which also quoted observers describing the UFO as "disc-like in shape with a hollow center, [with] a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe."
Soon after it was spotted, "the rotating lights under the object shifted colors and the object quickly ascended to higher altitudes and out of visual range."
The cable indicates the sighting led to vigorous internal debate about whether the aircraft was "an advanced reconnaissance device belonging to a foreign government, or whether the object was an unidentified flying object of extraterrestrial origins."
Without reaching a conclusion, the cable related, "this incident [redacted] had resulted in the decision to place the Zimbabwe [redacted] on high alert."
The incident bears an eerie resemblance to another famous UFO sighting in the African nation from 1994, which Jerome Clark, author of "The UFO Encyclopedia," called "the most remarkable close encounter of the third kind of the 1990s."
On Sept. 16 that year, 62 students at the Ariel School outside the town of Ruwa reported seeing a silver craft descend from the sky and make landfall on a nearby field.
Some of the children, whose ages ranged from 6 to 12, said several creatures dressed in black then approached the students and communicated with them telepathically, warning them the end of the world was coming due to pollution.
A number of journalists visited the school, including BBC's Zimbabwe correspondent Tim Leach, who interviewed students and staff.
He later said of the experience, "I could handle war zones, but I could not handle this."
Local UFO researcher Cynthia Hind visited the school a day later and asked the students to draw pictures of what they had seen. She said all the children told her the same exact story.
Trump and senior administration officials have not commented on the possible causes of unexplained aerial phenomena, and the records released to date have varied in corroboration.
The president has said he is skeptical about the existence of alien life, but ordered the release of UFO files after former President Barack Obama said of aliens in a February interview: "They're real, but I haven't seen them."
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