Convert dictionary entries into variables

Is there a Pythonic way to assign the values of a dictionary to its keys, in order to convert the dictionary entries into variables? I tried this out:

>>> d = {'a':1, 'b':2}
>>> for key,val in d.items():
        exec('exec(key)=val')
            
        exec(key)=val
                 ^ 
        SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I am certain that the key-value pairs are correct because they were previously defined as variables by me before. I then stored these variables in a dictionary (as key-value pairs) and would like to reuse them in a different function. I could just define them all over again in the new function, but because I may have a dictionary with about 20 entries, I thought there may be a more efficient way of doing this.

This was what I was looking for:

d = {'a':1, 'b':2}
for key,val in d.items():
    exec(key + '=val')

NOTE: As noted by @divenex in the comments, this solution only creates global variables -- it will not create local variables in a function.

Move the code inside a function and you will get an error.

def func():
    d = {'a':1, 'b':2}
    for key,val in d.items():
            exec(key + '=val')
    print(a,b)        
    
func()

Error message:
NameError: name 'a' is not defined